In the US most police radios transmit “in the clear”, i.e., not encrypted
That’s wild. Where I’m from (western Europe) the police may be using an encryption protocol riddled with backdoors (TETRA, though the “governments the West likes” protocol is much safer than the “open for anyone” version), but at least it’s encrypted enough that you’ll need some serious compute power to listen in on the police, barring software bugs in sender/receiver.
You you know if there is a reason your police force allows criminals to listen in on police communication? Or do they simply not care? With all the money your police force seems to spend on big trucks and big guns, you’d expect an encrypted radio would fit inside the budget…
Normal stuff is in the clear. When they’re going to do a raid or talk about sensitive stuff they do switch to an encrypted method of communication. Nobody is listening to the scanner and getting warned that their drug lab is about to be hit.
That’s wild. Where I’m from (western Europe) the police may be using an encryption protocol riddled with backdoors (TETRA, though the “governments the West likes” protocol is much safer than the “open for anyone” version), but at least it’s encrypted enough that you’ll need some serious compute power to listen in on the police, barring software bugs in sender/receiver.
You you know if there is a reason your police force allows criminals to listen in on police communication? Or do they simply not care? With all the money your police force seems to spend on big trucks and big guns, you’d expect an encrypted radio would fit inside the budget…
The police very much care, and want to be able to encrypt all their traffic.
It’s open for public transparency, mostly.
https://www.rcfp.org/police-radio-encryption-trend/
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/jan/03/new-york-police-encrypt-radio-nypd-transparency?ref=biztoc.com
And I fully support this. It shouldn’t be encrypted because they’re serving the citizens.
Normal stuff is in the clear. When they’re going to do a raid or talk about sensitive stuff they do switch to an encrypted method of communication. Nobody is listening to the scanner and getting warned that their drug lab is about to be hit.