BE AWARE OF YOUR RECORDINGS

[SIRENMAN]

Chris Brewington, Kurt (fire_freak_57), Mitch, and Lily D. Please read my post again I did not ask you to delete your own personal recordings. What I said is ....IF YOU PUT THEM IN PUBLIC DO NOT INCLUDE THE ACTIVATION CODES. Lily please tell me the EMA Directors that said it is OK to post Codes. I spoke to Miami County during their investigation and will turn the findings over to the Department of Homeland Security to determine if charges need to be filed. You are right it is public information, but if you induce panic it is jail time.

I actually thought that the people on this site were heads above the rest, but I am mistaken

[Tyler]

I really don't think having tones in videos makes a difference. People should be free to add in the tones if it gives them the effect they want for their videos. For me, sometimes the tones inspire an interesting mix of feelings like the panic of setting them off due to some extreme emergency and an additional layer of eeriness from hearing the normally inaudible back-end system.

Having the tones is a necessary condition for someone to be able to surreptitiously activate a siren, but it is the furthest thing from being a sufficient condition. One must also have the necessary technical skill and equipment to do so, which would also serve the (relatively) easy task of recording the tones themselves if they are not readily available. Public safety frequencies are public knowledge, and further details are readily available on most any amateur radio website/forum as it's a far more widespread hobby than siren collecting. E.g.: RadioReference.com

As such, banning videos with tones in them or badgering their creators will have no effect on the alleged problem. I say "alleged" because it hasn't even been proven yet that someone used tones on YouTube to initiate an unauthorized activation of a public siren system.

I don't disagree that rogue activations can cause big problems, but I do disagree tones in videos really has anything to do with it.

I agree with Mitch here. As siren hackings do exist and are indeed a problem, these people (whether they’re into the siren hobby or not) will surely find a way to get a hold of the tones themselves. Also, most of the sirens I personally record are at fire stations out in the boondocks of New England, and I don’t think anyone should need to worry about those. As far as the larger systems around here go, I actually know several of the EMA directors in charge, and they’re perfectly fine with me posting the tones. In my book, if you have permission from the EMA, you’re good to go.

The problem is that the videos with tones have the potential to encourage bad actions from people. It doesn’t matter if you are free to do it or not, or if it’s easy or not. Those frequencies and tones are really supposed to be closed off from the public and a lot of EMA directors have reported that you can search “Siren test with tones” on YouTube and immediately see this action in full force. They are terrified by this and they do not want anyone to publicly release this information in any capacity. If someone decides they are going to spam an activation, then you have dead batteries, burned chopper motors, etc to fix. That stuff is not cheap.

[MKIIProductions]

Let's end this conversation.

TL;DR - Edit the videos or take them down. End of discussion.
Here are both sides to this coin, and hopefully this might help some of you guys out.
As a solution: if the director of operations at these emergency management offices would turn on the transmit carrier squelch (of course, regarding the newer units that use packet radio / FSK to activate like ATI,) the transmission would be inaudible to those who have radios without carrier squelch capability. Just some food for thought to keep things like that from happening.
However; as for the systems still using two-tone activation, that's a different story. ANYONE can replicate that and use it maliciously if they find the correct frequency to transmit on. It's a fact we don't like to accept, but it is something that can happen. The tones were interesting at first, but they don't belong on the internet.

And to anyone with an amateur radio transceiver capable of transmitting on said frequencies...
The Baofeng UV5R is a very, very popular unit, and any that carry the Baofeng name are very inexpensive and easy to get your hands on. There are ups and downs to this, but here are my thoughts.
A lot of our younger enthusiasts have these radios. Please get your amateur radio license. It's a fun and great hobby, you learn quite a lot, and meet great people.
Read "the rules" of amateur radio and learn the courtesies.
Do NOT transmit outside of any of the allocated bands according to your license level. Some frequencies just outside of bands are allocated for MILITARY OPERATIONS.
Even if you just have a scanner, you better use it with some forward thinking and treat it with care, especially when you're listening in on packet radio or two-tone operations that are outside of the VHF/UHF Amateur radio bands. And keep the tones/packets OUT of your content on the internet.

W9JAG