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That, just went to shit...apparently, all the county, and local PD’s and very possibly the state highway patrol, just went to all encrypted systems..making my scanner useless for anything except weather stations, local air traffic... Now, I have a fairly expensive paperweight... If anybody’s thinking about buying one, you’d better check first and see what kind of systems your local L.E. is using, or you might end up listening to weather reports...
We did that a few years ago. It was a result of a lot of criminals around here using scanner apps on their smart phones to listen to our traffic. There's only a few agencies in this area that don't use encryption now.Quote:
Originally Posted by ralph
Internet scanner apps are useless in my area unless you want to listen to air traffic control or some fire departments.
This is one factor, another is that during the recent "civil unrest" various miscreants were accessing and blocking non-encrypted channels.Quote:
Originally Posted by TC215
I can't believe it took this long for agencies to start locking their comms down...
The feds did years ago. I'd say my outfit switched in the late 90's or thereabouts...to the best of my recollection.Quote:
Originally Posted by rcbusmc24
For years, we left certain channels, including our main dispatch channel, un-encrypted. We had other channels that were encrypted that we could use when needed. A big part of having un-encrypted channels was so the media could listen...they raised hell when agencies started encrypting comms.Quote:
Originally Posted by rcbusmc24
Yeah, I understand, it just sucks..I liked listening in, and good scanners aren’t cheap.. I guess because of the criminals, we can’t have nice things..I’m guessing scanning L.E. frequency’s is going to quickly becoming a thing of the past, and scanners are going to become like 8-track tape players..Quote:
Originally Posted by TC215
Locally, NJSP went to trunking systems back in the late 80s early 90s? and local PDs and PSP went to a mix of open and encrypted frequencies not too long after that. AFAIK, they have always had tactical channels and for a brief period Nextel PTTs were a thing. Then smart phones happened ...Quote:
Originally Posted by rcbusmc24
The agency I work for (in a non-sworn position) still uses unencrypted comms for most everything and just toggles to encryption for brief transmissions of confidential information, like the names of the usual suspects fighting in the parking lot or the phone number of someone an officer needs to call. The fact that we're in a very spread out, rural mountainous area where analog works better than digital and our analog encryption sucks (often gets very broken up on decryption) plays a part in this.Quote:
Originally Posted by TC215