Owner is still owner, be it someone who lives in a single family residence, or that of a municipality.
In my area, tornado sirens are unencrypted aand a simple recordable and replayable frequency. The cost to add an encrypted radio connection is $100k for the base station, and $25k per siren. There are 80+ sirens.
If this were open source, then a simple computer could he retrofitted to do this. But because they are highly proprietary, the county would be on the hook for $2.1M just to defend against an asshole with a HackRF.
FLOSS and open principles should matter to governments as well as individuals. Trading temporary easiness for no long term usability is utterly ridiculous. And you end up with a doorstop in the end either way.
In my area, tornado sirens are unencrypted aand a simple recordable and replayable frequency. The cost to add an encrypted radio connection is $100k for the base station, and $25k per siren. There are 80+ sirens.
If this were open source, then a simple computer could he retrofitted to do this. But because they are highly proprietary, the county would be on the hook for $2.1M just to defend against an asshole with a HackRF.
FLOSS and open principles should matter to governments as well as individuals. Trading temporary easiness for no long term usability is utterly ridiculous. And you end up with a doorstop in the end either way.