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this post was submitted on 20 Feb 2024
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Mildly Interesting
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Police scanner app?
I'm gonna assume you're not from the US given your lemmy instance. In the US most police radios transmit "in the clear", i.e., not encrypted. As such, anyone can buy a "police scanner", or a radio on the same band as police/first-responder frequencies.
In the internet age, there's websites (and apparently apps now too), that physically monitor these radio channels and stream them online. Hence, a "police scanner app". Hope that helps.
Having typed all that out, the only thing I ask is to let us know where you're from, please.
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.
There is an argument to be made that there’s a public security interest to encrypt some traffic, like when they call in someone’s information to run a check on them. And I think that’s a legit concern.
There are some fully encrypted systems (which cops want), and there are some hybrid systems, which are more expensive but would keep transparency in place for the population. Those systems work a variety of ways, such as putting the live comms on a 30-minute delay when there’s a big incident, and fully blocking personal information from citizens.
I think the latter is what they should be using, with very very very specific and clear rules on when they can and cannot encrypt, with regular external audits of the encrypted portion to verify no misuse. But if they won’t go hybrid and submit to inspection, leave it wide open. It’s more important that we have transparency (at this moment in time, due to police behavior), which is a thing I really really hate to say but it’s true..