[Myrddin]

My wife is a police/fire/EMS dispatcher. Her radios are the P25 style. Normal traffic is operated unencrypted. The have some "tac" channels that are encrypted. Typically, the "tac" channels are used with SWAT for a high risk operation to prevent the bad guys from monitoring the operation. For specific ops, they may choose radio silence. One officer almost got shot as he was crawling on the ground below a window. Radio traffic on his handheld betrayed his presence.

I have a trunking scanner, so I can listen to local traffic including when my wife is dispatching. I don't listen often. My old analog scanners still have value for non-digital traffic.

[DPMD]

>to prevent the bad guys from monitoring the operation.

Give them a little time...

[bigbob]

That’s how the county and state police operate here, and I don’t think anyone should object to keeping some operations like tac and detective talkgroups private through encryption. While it’s not very exciting to listen to them run license plates, a week or so ago I heard a high speed (130mph) chase going thru town and that’s kinda exciting to hear (especially the part about “stop sticks” being deployed. They got the idiot for attempted murder after he tried ramming a squad car). To me, listening give a sense of what the police have to deal with and appreciation for the risks they take. I just don’t see the justification for 24/7 encryption. As your example shows, even with encryption only radio silence can prevent a bad guy from hearing radio traffic.