Astrid TETRA network for emergency services in Belgium easy to eavesdrop?
House searches were conducted at some journalists who have been suspected to have devices to intercept communications .
According to www.crimesite.nl, the ASTRID TETRA network for emergency services in Belgium, is not encrypted and therefore easy to eavesdrop.
The network is used among others by the police, firefighters and ambulances, and was founded in 1998. The publication communicates that digital network uses no form of encryption. With a simple scanner, a laptop and a piece of open source software can decode the communication between the emergency services without much effort intercepted. The publication also states that to turn on the encryption protocol on the network should be easy. The Dutch TETRA network (C2000) however, is encrypted. Belgium initially decided not to use encryption in order to avoid problems when using different brands of radio equipment. But now there is a encryption on the network however all radio devices communicating on the network still have to be switched on to encryption.
In Belgium, eavesdropping to the ASTRID network is forbidden. Last month it was announced that house searches were conducted at some journalists who have been suspected to have devices to intercept the communications of ASTRID.
ASTRID's feedback on the above article published at the ASTRID official website is bright and very clear.
ASTRID communicates that the communications network as well as the radios are fully encrypted. With authentication, each radio in the network is unique and can only be give access to the network only when allowed by ASTRID. The TETRA standard also supports air interface encryption. This ultimate safety barrier was fully implemented in June 2011.
The Air interface encryption means that all transmitted information (voice, data, short messages, status, identity, control channel) is encrypted using secret keys and secret algorithms, and therefore is completely unintelligible. Only the called party, which has the same algorithm can decode this information. This algorithm is an integral part of the radio terminal and is unique.
The algorithm at the ASTRID network is the so called TEA2 encryption. This algorithm was adopted by the ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) developed exclusively by the emergency and security services in the EU and Schengen countries used to be.
All these special technical features and the implemented encryption provides the ASTRID network a very high security against eavesdropping.
Currently there are about 2500 TETRA contracts in more than 121 countries around the world. 32% of these contracts are related to Public Safety. Some examples of nationwide Public Safety TETRA networks in Europe are based in: the UK, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway , Ireland, Denmark and Finland.
All of these networks are highly encrypted.
TETRA-Applications.com
