UPDATE at 8:45 AM … all police and fire chiefs except two vote to encrypt fire dispatch at Northwest Central Dispatch System (NWCDS). Final vote after 9:00 a.m. by NWCDS board members.
According to the 2025 Meeting Agendas & Minutes of Northwest Central Dispatch System (NWCDS), which is the 9-1-1 call intake center and emergency dispatch system, there will be a voice vote of the Executive Committee (fire chiefs and police chiefs) and then a voice vote of the Joint Board of Directors on Thursday morning, March 20, 2025.
Wheeling Police Chief Jaime Dunne announced he will be stepping down after unionized patrol officers signed a letter formally declaring they’d lost confidence in his leadership. It is unknown if Dunne will be voting tomorrow morning, but another chief in this group, who may be on deck for a no confidence vote, will likely be voting.
If the NWCDS decision favors fire dispatch encryption, there would be a significant disruption in the authenticity and accuracy of information regarding public safety incidents in a very large area of square miles and population. The police department communications are already encrypted (since 2013).
Fire Dispatch That Might Become Encrypted
Arlington Heights, Barrington, Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District, Buffalo Grove, Elk Grove Village, Hoffman Estates, Inverness, Mount Prospect, Palatine, Rolling Meadows, Schaumburg, Streamwood, and Wheeling
NWCDS municipalities with NWCDS administered fire communications (not including Barrington Countryside Fire Protection District) covers an area of over 39,000 square miles and a population of over 491,000 people — even more when including visitors and employees of businesses in the communities.
Many police departments are not transparent regarding incidents that occur, and NWCDS has a highly secure system while significantly redacting on-air radio communications to the fire departments. Additional incident details are distributed to the fire departments by an internal text messaging system when necessary.
Yet police chiefs in the northwest suburbs want to silence public fire radio communications, which would leave around a half million population in the dark about public safety incidents that are occurring in these communities. They are essentially cutting off a category that should be an important tool connecting media partnership with government, and connecting citizens with their fire departments.
In the City of Chicago, fire dispatch is public, and the Chicago Fire Department even occasionally communicates on their official X account with the expectation that media are listening to their radios — explaining incidents and announcing press conferences. Also, in the City of Chicago, when the police department radios were encrypted, they set up official online radio feeds that are delayed by 30 minutes, available for every day citizens and the media. Most of the supposed leaders in the NWCDS system are ages behind with procedures and technology to inform and respect the citizens in their jurisdictions. Many of these leaders are abnormally obsessed with keeping information from their citizens.
Details, such as when an incident has occurred will be inaccurate, and details will be inadequate. The leaders will say they will share the information on their social media, but this has been low priority, and there is no indication that there will be an effort to improve these conditions. Public safety information will become sloppy.
The police chiefs have indicated that they need fire dispatch encrypted because of police officer safety. If they are so interested in police officer safety, why don’t they eliminate traffic stops requiring police officers to stand, vulnerable on busy roadways?
The Sound of Silence
Silence from authorities causes rumors to spread on Facebook, X, and the Neighbor app, which is loaded with pranksters, liars, comedians, and over-reactors. Think of the chaos of information we might have ahead of us regarding public safety information … all because of obsessed leaders, or worse, unethical leaders that are hiding criminal activity or playing favorites with information flow and privilege. Silence will eliminate reliable leads for media. It is a great lack of respect for media and citizens.
The Sound of Silence also creates a tone that the average person on the street doesn’t have the privilege or the right to know things about their surroundings. The encryption will produce a detachment of citizens from their first responders.
Ironically, Elk Grove Village is not out of the woods on a police-involved shooting and lawsuit, and they already want to decrease transparency by silencing fire dispatch.
The Village of Schaumburg kept silent about a fatal crash that occurred January 31, 2025 at Roselle Road and State Parkway. One person described a police unit arriving on the scene immediately after the crash. There are several witnesses that report they saw a police unit chasing the Dodge Charger, but stopped chasing a few minutes before the crash occurred that killed the driver. The driver died following one month in the hospital. Why is the Village of Schaumburg not transparent and honest with its residents?
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Think of the vast amount of information that a 9-1-1 center collects over the years. Have you ever seen any kind of general disclosure or statistics from NWCDS? Have you ever seen any promise that data is not sold to an information broker? Has the NWCDS ever explained how data from our emergencies are kept secure? Think of the extra value NWCDS data might have if formerly public dispatches become silent due to encryption. They will be the only entity with any type of information. Information in the news media will be less detailed and less precise. Yes, there is much information held at a dispatch center, such as how many domestic disturbances have occurred at a specific address … anything you can think of might be held in this treasury of information — similar to how Facebook might have a profile on you that they sell to advertisers.
Who Owns Our Data?
Massed in its totality, personal data becomes a commercially valuable asset. It circulates among data brokers, targeted advertisers, political campaigns, and even foreign states as the valuable fuel powering predictive interventions. As of 2019, the U.S. data brokerage industry alone was worth more than $200 billion. At the same time, that data enables new kinds of harm, such as the manipulative electioneering engaged in by Cambridge Analytica, the divisive and radicalizing effects of Facebook’s algorithm design, and the serious financial and privacy losses that accrue to individuals when a company’s data banks are breached.
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The Government Really Is Spying On You — And It’s Legal
The freakout moment that set journalist Byron Tau on a five-year quest to expose the sprawling U.S. data surveillance state occurred over a “wine-soaked dinner” back in 2018 with a source he cannot name.
The tipster told Tau the government was buying up reams of consumer data — information scraped from cellphones, social media profiles, internet ad exchanges and other open sources — and deploying it for often-clandestine purposes like law enforcement and national security in the U.S. and abroad. The places you go, the websites you visit, the opinions you post — all collected and legally sold to federal agencies.
In his new book, Means of Control, Tau details everything he’s learned since that dinner: An opaque network of government contractors is peddling troves of data, a legal but shadowy use of American citizens’ information that troubles even some of the officials involved. And attempts by Congress to pass privacy protections fit for the digital era have largely stalled, though reforms to a major surveillance program are now being debated.
“Any nightmare use for data you can think of will probably eventually happen,” Tau said. “It might not happen immediately, but it’ll happen eventually.”
— The Government Really Is Spying On You — And It’s Legal/Politico
Think of tracking and data-sharing activities that are involved with social media selling to advertisers. Now think of the opportunities that are available from a 9-1-1 center, which has never disclosed how it uses our information, or when it is disposed, if ever. People should have the right to know their physical address profile with 9-1-1. Imagine moving into an address that was previously occupied by a couple that had weekly, sometimes violent fights. Then imagine you call the police for a stolen bike report, and six police units arrive because of the call history at the physical address.
Local government has a monopoly on information, and it does not share, which results in a lack of quality information for citizens to use to reduce risks, and be safer.
The encryption of fire dispatch is one more step to keep us dumb and naive. Encryption is one more step in the government’s acquisition of more information for itself, and less information for each citizen.
Knowledge is power, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
“Knowledge is power.”
— Francis Bacon
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
— Lord Acton (John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton)
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