Jun 04, 2019  Are Police Scanners Illegal. The short answer is no. Operating a police scanner is legal in the United States. Generally, it will not have the authorities surround your house and then jail you for using a police scanner. There are a few more certain conditions that have to be fulfilled before the police can penalize you.

• Are Police Scanners Illegal In Texas
• Where To Buy Police Scanners

Effective immediately we will be deleting, without notice, any negative threads or posts that deal with the use of encryption and streaming of scanner audio.We've noticed a huge increase in rants and negative posts that revolve around agencies going to encryption due to the broadcasting of scanner audio on the internet. It's now worn out and continues to be the same recycled rants. These rants hijack the threads and derail the conversation. They no longer have a place anywhere on this forum other than in the designated threads in the Rants forum in the Tavern.If you violate these guidelines your post will be deleted without notice and an infraction will be issued.

We are not against discussion of this issue. You just need to do it in the right place. For example:https://forums.radioreference.com/rants/224104-official-thread-live-audio-feeds-scanners-wait-encryption.html. It wouldn’t be just one particular thing but rather a combination of many, such as your signature line. A true whacker lists multiple scanners that he owns in his signature line like a hunter who mounts heads of their kills on their walls.

The older the model, the more street cred the whacker has. Then we have the “shack” pics. It usually involves several computers (one has to have a minimum of Unitrunker or DSD running). The other usually has the RadioReference homepage, forums or database. Of course no shack is complete without the multiple scanners, radios, MDC decoder, clock in every time zone, weather station and of course, the most bad ass commander chair. And let’s not forget the mobile shack. Usually an old police interceptor with multiple radios and antennas.

You can’t go covert and be a whacker. And make sure to finish it off with your call sign vanity license plate.

These are just a few that will earn you an encryption key.Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk. Well I would not be a good whacker then. No scanners at all just a bunch of old radios. Slime datta ken myanimelist. There are several compters in the shack but most of them are sitting in the corner until I have to change the programming on one of the old Motorolas.

I have no idea what unitracker is. Only one clock showing eastern time.

Would not be caught dead in a crown vic. I do ham the call letter license plate but the radios are still sitting in the broke down minivan in the back yard. One of these days I may get them moved to the truck. I do have a Hi vis vest but that is only used when I am helping CERT which almost never responds to anything. They had a missing persons search last night but I was already asleep. Ford needs to make a new model; I would suggest the name 'INQUISITION' to surpass the Expedition and Excursion. A supercharged V12 AWD to out sprint the cheezy impractical Bugatti Veyron.I had an E350 15 passenger van for a while, bought it nearly new and drove it 138K miles until the dual AC strarted to be a bother.

It was a very powerful and pleasant vehicle to drive on the long haul. As an everyday driver it got better gas mileage and handled better than the Expedition that replaced it. Extremely tough truck. I recall when cellular first came into use it was narrow band FM in the 800 mhz region.There were no receivers that covered 800 mhz that long ago.I found an old mechanical UHF TV tuner the kind that was variable.The output was somewhere around 50 to 60 MHZ don't really remember the tuner I.F. Frequency, so I just sent the tuner I.F. Output to an old scanner that covered low band.And there they were.cell conversations.what a load of fun.

Then the signal would change sites and I would loose the signal, however sometimes I could find it again. I could hear the data burst just before everything changed frequency.Well that shows how old I am, but sure was fun in the good old days, could listen to everything. And why not?I did not cause any harm and did not divulge anything that I heard. It was just entertainment and my love of radio communications and the technology involved./MM. To be clear, I am not for outlawing any form of radio receiver. But, just for the sake of discussion.You have picked the wrong comparison from the ECPA. The ECPA made it illegal to listen to cell conversations, that is true.

It is arguable that it was unneeded in this aspect as it was probably already illegal to listen to these conversations under other regulations, but that is a different discussion. So the ECPA made it specifically illegal to listen. Pretty much unenforceable except after the fact in some cases.However, another thing the ECPA did was to make it illegal to manufacture or offer for sale any 'scanner' capable of receiving 800 MHz cell transmissions. What was a scanner was specifically defined. And in this way it had a much greater impact. Later it was amended to make it illegal to make a scanner that could be easily modified to receive such transmission.The upshot of all of that is that today, and it has been that way for over 30 years, you cannot purchase, legally, any scanner in the US with such coverage.

And you essentially never see them for sale as new equipment.It very affectively made it very difficult to find/purchase a new scanner with this capability. Sure, you can, illegally, import one from outside the country. You can build an external converter and tune to these frequencies, illegal, but possible. This reduced the number of new scanners in the country with these abilities to a trickle, at best.If a law was passed today that made police scanners (any scanner capable of receiving police transmissions) illegal it would be similar to that impact, however much worse.If it was illegal to offer for sale a scanner capable of receiving police transmissions, with the same kind of limitations as 800 MHz cell transmissions, that would mean no scanner hardware sold in the US today would be legal.

You can find Part 90 freqs in HF, VHF-Lo, VHF-Hi, and scattered through UHF.Of course, it might not stop people from using the equipment they already have, but getting new equipment would become much more difficult. It would kill the scanner hobby (even for those who do not monitor the police) in the US, or at least reduce it to a few die-hards using existing equipment (until that died) or illegal imports.A law making it illegal to listen is hard to enforce, a law making it illegal to sell or own the equipment is much more enforceable. Still not fool-proof, no law is, people will find a way to break every law you make, but it would kill the hobby and the industry.T! Very interesting comments.Now that cell is encrypted it is not possible to listen, so it is not necessary to block out that portion of the spectrum.(there is nothing to listen to in the blocked out segment )I don't know how difficult it is for manufacturers to do so, but I assume it is easy with algorithms.Members often say in the forums: 'it is illegal to listen to enc communications'I find this somewhat amusing as it is not possible to break AES 258 encryption.So, there is a law making something illegal that is impossible to do anyway.

The 90s scare In the 90s, it was fairly common knowledge that you could listen to phone calls with an inexpensive police scanner like this one.In the 1990s, word got out that it was possible to listen to phone conversations with an ordinary police scanner you could buy at Radio Shack for around $100. And in those days, it was just as easy to find a as it was a McDonald’s or Subway. I remember my dad would rarely talk on a cordless phone because of this. I only ever saw him use one once. And he wasn’t too happy that I would use one and think nothing of it.Oddly, although he was unwilling to talk about mundane things on a cordless phone, he thought nothing of talking about medical information on his cell phone. Cellular phones were also analog in those days. That meant it was also possible to pick up cell phone calls on a police scanner.

I guess no one ever mentioned that to him.I can remember sometime around 2005, driving around with a friend chasing trains. We’d listen to train dispatchers on his police scanner to find out where the trains would be. He drove and I ran the scanner. I locked in on some guy’s cell phone conversation. I don’t remember what he was talking about, but I remember thinking this shouldn’t still be possible.

After about a minute, my friend asked me why we were listening to that, and I resumed my scanning duty.But because it used to be possible, rumors persist that it may still be possible to listen to cell phone calls with a scanner. The digital transitionI clung to an ancient analog cell phone long after it was cool, just because it was more reliable and it sounded better.

Early digital cell phones sounded terrible. Besides, if someone wanted to listen to me walking someone through connecting tape drives to Windows servers, maybe they’d learn something.

But eventually the industry moved to all-digital cellular networks because it allowed other things, like Internet on our phones. We take that for granted now.That means it’s digital, and it’s encrypted. Encryption is just scrambling a message so only the person on the receiving end can descramble it. That means your neighbor can’t listen to your cell phone calls with a police scanner anymore. Listening to cell phone conversations is certainly possible, but it requires more expensive equipment and a much higher degree of skill than using a police scanner.The biggest telltale sign of the neighborhood mad scientist trying to listen to your calls would be your mobile phone degrading to 3G or 2G or lower, which have weaker encryption that they probably can break.

But this is more the stuff of theory than practicality, due to the cost involved.There are still some parts of the phone network that sometimes get converted to analog and transmitted, so a nosy neighbor with a police scanner can still pick up parts of calls occasionally. But there’s no specific way for a nosy neighbor with a scanner to target you precisely. Can police listen in on cell phone calls?Use of Stingray devices by local law enforcement is controversial because it allows them to listen to phone conversations without a search warrant. Since I work in computer security and my clients’ security issues are none of the police’s business, I try to use teleconferencing apps like Skype and Zoom to discuss sensitive information.Stingrays work by simulating an ordinary cell phone tower, so cell phones connect to that device rather than directly to a cell provider’s network. The Stingray also has enough information that it’s able to decrypt the phone conversation, though it may not happen exactly in realtime. This allows the police or other law enforcement to listen in.

The Stingray relays the information so your call still works, and you’re not aware it’s happening.I don’t have a problem with Stingrays being used on specific individuals who are subject to a criminal investigation, with a search warrant, similar to the way phone taps used to be used. What I don’t like is Stingrays being used to scoop up all conversations in an area, as this circumvents due process. Can you get in trouble for listening to a police scanner?The public airwaves belong to everybody, so there is nothing illegal about listening to the airwaves. There’s also no way for anyone to detect you’re doing it, since a police scanner is just a radio.

It listens on different frequencies than the radio in your car, but it’s still a radio.If someone wants to use the public airwaves and doesn’t want you listening to it, it’s their responsibility to scramble the signal. Today the phone companies do that for us by encrypting our phone conversations.There’s nothing wrong with listening to the local police and fire department on a scanner.

Are Police Scanners Illegal In Texas

Journalists did it for the entire 20th century, and that was how they covered the criminal justice beat. The famous photojournalist Weege used to sleep with a police scanner by his bed. He trained himself to get up when he heard certain things and rush to the scene of an event in the middle of the night to get the shots that propelled him to immortality. Can scanners listen to cordless phones?Scanners can’t listen to modern cordless phones, specifically, DECT 6.0 phones. With older standards, it’s hit and miss. Some less expensive cordless phones from recent decades didn’t scramble their signals. These tended to be low-budget phones, but people would buy them because they were cheap.Many cordless phones sold since the mid 1990s did scramble their signals.

Where To Buy Police Scanners

Attrition has certainly reduced the number of cordless phones transmitting on public airwaves since the early 90s, however. More and more people are ditching their landlines, and those who do still have landlines find DECT 6.0 phones work better than their old phones did. Can you listen to cell phone calls with a scanner: In conclusionSo, can you listen to cell phone calls with a scanner? Can your neighbor listen to your cell phone calls with a scanner? If you have a really old cordless phone, they can pick that up, but that’s yet another reason to upgrade to a DECT 6.0 phone if you still have a landline of some sort. DECT 6.0 is digital, encrypted,.