The NYPD is spending $390 million on a new radio system that will encrypt officers’ communications — reversing a near-century-old practice of allowing the public and the press to listen to police dispatches.
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And it’s easily decoded when you have the keys which, based on every other department that uses them, won’t take long to leak or be cracked.Lot of folks use SDR setups on a PC to decrypt and stream police and fire radio to a service like Broadcastify
From a legal standpoint does that change things? Especially if the keys aren’t intended to be public?
Not until you use it to expose police wrongdoing.
I assume it depends on where you live, but police scanner radios have been around and on the shelf at stores for half a century. I imagine it’s a legal grey area similar to radar detectors.