D.C. Mayor Removes Encryption of Fire and EMS Radio Communications

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser will announce as early as this week that the city will abandon its new system of encrypting radio communications among firefighters and paramedics, two administration officials said Tuesday.

The District’s encryption came under intense scrutiny last month when Metro officials charged that changes­ to the encryption settings and the channels that D.C. firefighters use in its subway stations and tunnels led to a widespread radio failure during the response to the fatal Jan. 12 smoke incident.

In that incident, D.C. firefighters could not communicate with supervisors above ground when they learned that a train was trapped in a smoke-filled tunnel south of the L’Enfant Plaza station with more than 200 passengers aboard.

D.C. firefighters and the city’s homeland security agency have disputed Metro’s assertion that encryption played any part in the radio failure last month.

The two administration officials said the encryption issue had been under review since before Bowser was inaugurated Jan. 2.

“It has nothing to do with the Metro incident,” said one of the two officials. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be seen as preempting Bowser’s announcement. The story was previously reported by WRC (Channel 4).

“The timing of the announcement has in fact been complicated because we don’t want to suggest in any way that it is connected to the outstanding allegation that [encryption and the Metro incident] are connected,” the official said.

The District began work to encrypt its radio transmissions after the 2013 rampage at the Navy Yard. The shooting that left 12 dead prompted a dangerous search by police as they hunted the gunman before fatally shooting him. Although communication involving federal and local police agencies could not be heard by outsiders, the fire department scanner – widely available over the Internet – provided an account of some of the behind-the-scenes activities. Firefighters were not in the building when the manhunt was underway.

Former mayor Vincent C. Gray cast encryption as important to keep real-time information away from criminals who might use it to further their purposes­ as well as to protect patient safety, because paramedics transmit information over radios.

But the District’s move to encryption drew rebukes last year from fire chiefs in neighboring jurisdictions in Maryland and Virginia who warned that it might complicate calls for mutual aid.

In a D.C. Council hearing last week on the troubled Metro response, Edward C. Smith, president of the D.C. firefighters union, renewed the union’s call for the District to reevaluate the utility of the system.Smith said that in rare circumstances encryption could be useful but that it should not be the norm.

Late Tuesday, Smith said, “We commend the Bowser administration for reversing a bad decision that was made by the prior administration.”

One of the administration officials said the District remains confident that the National Transportation Safety Board wouldn’t find fault with the city’s radio encryption in its review of the response to the Metro accident.

“The decision came out of a recommendation” from the fire department, the official said. “They know best about the reality of first­hand experience and how it is used.”

aaron.davis@washpost.com

Peter Hermann contributed to this report.

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