Social Loud and Clear

[FROG MAN]

Is this a normal LEO practice. I monitor several county sheriff dept and local city pd radio transmissions over our home scanner. One local small town dept is constantly running traffic stops. During the exchange for information with local 911 dispatchers the dispatcher gives the usual name address etc of the driver. Next the officer will ask for and receive over the air the drivers SS#. Identity theft is a major problem and now if you are stopped for a traffic violation your name,address, and SS#are broadcast for all scanner land or monitoring thiefs to hear.This must be a new practice because I don't remember hearing this before until recently.

[Yammer Dan]

Must be Sheriff's Dept?

[FROG MAN]

Little town just north of where MamaMo works.

[Eddie Fulmer]

I think this is a mistake they are making. The way I see it they could actually be liable. You should bring this to the attention of the Chief and see what his thoughts are.

 

Lt Eddie Fulmer

[friesman]

I think our police dept here moved to a digitally encrypted system a few years ago, exactly because of this issue. I understand now unless its an emergency most of the information exchange is entered on the cruisers laptop and encrypted point to point and not broadcasted at all over the voice system.

 

Brian

[bossman]

Greetings, I have a scanner at home and in my work truck and most of the time but not always when they call in to dispatch they will give a name and d.o.b. address and ss#. Sometimes they just give a drivers liceanse #. I guess it depends who it is I guess.

[VTirelli]

I know in some states the Driver's ID number was their SSN.

 

As far as I'm aware of, it changed not long after 9/11.

 

In NY, the only time we might ask SSN is to verify a warrant, but our dispatchers are (usually) smart enough to do it over the Nextel or over the in car computer.