Radio Scanners

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Firstly, is it completely legal to monitor police frequencies? And if so, how much would a reasonable budget scanner cost to do this?

Not for anything illegal mind, just find it facinating to listen to traffic police etc.

Burnsy
 
Do the police not encrypt their radio these days? Surely it would be in their favour to do so?

Edit: always used to be illegal to do it when I was a kid.
 
burnsy2023 said:
Firstly, is it completely legal to monitor police frequencies? And if so, how much would a reasonable budget scanner cost to do this?

Not for anything illegal mind, just find it facinating to listen to traffic police etc.

Burnsy

Illegal according to the Official Secrets act, we're subject to it as we're privy to Police information through our work, so i'd imagine that its silmilar that way too.. but whos to know?
 
Jonny69 said:
Do the police not encrypt their radio these days? Surely it would be in their favour to do so?

Edit: always used to be illegal to do it when I was a kid.

I'm sure I heard that they did now, could be wrong though...
 
The Police use Airwave now, which makes use of similar technology to mobile phones. It's essentially impossible to listen-in.
 
Yeah just read this:

Yes you can listen to the tetra police radios, you have two ways to do this.
1) join the police force.

2) spend about the same as a third world countrys debt on buying the type of equipment used at GCHQ.

Oh well, that scupperrs that idea then.

Burnsy
 
They stopped using analogue equipment a good while ago. You can listen to ATC but that's also illegal. It doesn't seem to stop anyone though!
 
Spleenus said:
I used to be able to pickup what I think was an ATC on my old radio since I could push the fm dial past 108MHz.
Aye that would be right as you'd be shifting it into the air band.
 
It is and always has been for as far back as I remember illegal to listen to any of the emergency services transmissions, for varying reasons including the Data Protection Act and the Official Secrets Act amongst others.

But I always thought that it is completely legal to listen to ATC.

I remember a good few years ago in my teens that I was sat parked up at our local airport with about 10 other people all with scanners listening to ATC and various other Aviation frequencies.

Even the Police turned up on several occassions to take a coffee break and would stand talking to these people in blatent ears/eyes range of the scanner.

Oh, and I wasn't there threw choice :)
 
collisster said:
I heard that it was ok to listen with a scanner but not transmit
Nope, it's against the law unless you have good cause to be listening.

You can listen to broadcasts intended for general reception like weather and navigation broadcasts, e.g. London VOLMET. You're not allowed to listen to frequencies operated by a controller though.

Despite the law, I can't think of anyone ever being pulled up on it. OFCOM have bigger fish to fry than the anorak with an airband radio. :D
 
Regards the police frequencies as has already pointed out they're encrypted now so you won't pick it up on normal equipment.

Legally I'm pretty sure you can listen in, but it's illegal to act on any information you hear. i.e. if you hear a report about a car crash etc your not allowed to go down to have a look.

I had a scanner years ago, it covered up to 1.3GHZ which included the mobile phone frequencies at that time (900+ MHZ), of course we only ever picked these up by accident, turning off straight away (as it's completely illegal to listen into them).
 
I always thought it was illegal to listen in to police transmissions.

IIRC In the early days of radar detectors the police (or crown prosecution) tried to use the same law to convict people who used radar detectors on the grounds they were listening to police transmissions. They lost as a judge decided that there was no information in the transmissions emitted by radar guns, therefore there was nothing to listen to.
 
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