The second one is such utter hogwash on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.
Police that are intending to disrupt a protest are planning and organizing in person, not over the radios. That’s just stupid.
Regular police radios are frequently encrypted now. You can be damn sure DHS has been encrypting their radio traffic for decades. I can say, from personal experience, that my small hometown police started encrypting some of their radio traffic at least 40+ years ago.
Even if it wasn’t encrypted, you have to know what frequencies they’re using. Scanners only check one frequency at a time for traffic, so it can take several seconds to get through all of them if you have a lot of candidates. This means that you will frequently miss the first part of a transmission, and occasionally miss the entire thing if it’s short. Once it detects something on one frequency, it stops there to monitor that frequency for as long as the conversation is going on. This means that you’re missing everything happening on all of the other frequencies you have.
Lastly, RADIO SCANNERS DO NOT TRANSMIT! PERIOD. They are receivers, like the radio in your car that you listen to music local advertisements on.
It’s fairly obvious that the person that wrote that has never in their life used a radio scanner and has no idea how they actually work.
The whole text is smug and dumb (traffic cones? the kind with no holes in the top???) so I’m not surprised to hear it has all these inaccuracies.
Police that are intending to disrupt a protest are planning and organizing in person, not over the radios. That’s just stupid.
They do need some kind of telecommunication. At a certain size, a protest sprawls many blocks and it will ebb and flow and shift around. You know you’re making an impact when they bring in a helicopter to spot. Obviously the copter is radioing the ground. But yeah also probably not in an easily-overheard way.
Also, transmitting is exactly what they want you to do. Triangulation of a signal source is trivial. It makes it sound like this was written by someone that wants you to get arrested.
Regular police radios are frequently encrypted now. You can be damn sure DHS has been encrypting their radio traffic for decades. I can say, from personal experience, that my small hometown police started encrypting some of their radio traffic at least 40+ years ago
yeah, my small hometown (i don’t even have fiber internet small oh your gods i’m going to go on a psychotic break over this later this week aren’t i) has their encrypted channel and their unencrypted channel because they know all us dorks are and have been listening for decades. when the town almost burned down a few years back, the unencrypted channel was how the last minute volunteer emergency services got a shitton of extra fire breaks mowed across the county fuck your property lines style and kept most of the town intact
Nothing stopping the transmitter from being attached to a cheap battery and left under the dumpster of a nearby restaurant.
Sure, they can find it, but it takes resources away from harassing civilians.
Someone smarter than me could probably design, or link an existing design, to a cheap assembly that broadcast static and made comms harder for these thugs.
There’s also truncing, but some scanners support that. I imagine the op was referring to baofengs from Amazon or something which opens another can of worms
The first paragraph is great advice.
The second one is such utter hogwash on so many levels it’s hard to know where to start.
Police that are intending to disrupt a protest are planning and organizing in person, not over the radios. That’s just stupid.
Regular police radios are frequently encrypted now. You can be damn sure DHS has been encrypting their radio traffic for decades. I can say, from personal experience, that my small hometown police started encrypting some of their radio traffic at least 40+ years ago.
Even if it wasn’t encrypted, you have to know what frequencies they’re using. Scanners only check one frequency at a time for traffic, so it can take several seconds to get through all of them if you have a lot of candidates. This means that you will frequently miss the first part of a transmission, and occasionally miss the entire thing if it’s short. Once it detects something on one frequency, it stops there to monitor that frequency for as long as the conversation is going on. This means that you’re missing everything happening on all of the other frequencies you have.
Lastly, RADIO SCANNERS DO NOT TRANSMIT! PERIOD. They are receivers, like the radio in your car that you listen to
musiclocal advertisements on.It’s fairly obvious that the person that wrote that has never in their life used a radio scanner and has no idea how they actually work.
Even regular private companies encrypt radio traffic, partially just to avoid getting someone else’s shit crossover.
The whole text is smug and dumb (traffic cones? the kind with no holes in the top???) so I’m not surprised to hear it has all these inaccuracies.
They do need some kind of telecommunication. At a certain size, a protest sprawls many blocks and it will ebb and flow and shift around. You know you’re making an impact when they bring in a helicopter to spot. Obviously the copter is radioing the ground. But yeah also probably not in an easily-overheard way.
Also, transmitting is exactly what they want you to do. Triangulation of a signal source is trivial. It makes it sound like this was written by someone that wants you to get arrested.
yeah, my small hometown (i don’t even have fiber internet small oh your gods i’m going to go on a psychotic break over this later this week aren’t i) has their encrypted channel and their unencrypted channel because they know all us dorks are and have been listening for decades. when the town almost burned down a few years back, the unencrypted channel was how the last minute volunteer emergency services got a shitton of extra fire breaks mowed across the county fuck your property lines style and kept most of the town intact
All true, but there’re fairly inexpensive radios on AliExpress and the like that do transmit as well.
It’s technically illegal, at least on my neck of the woods, to transmit on reserved frequencies, but one could.
Nothing stopping the transmitter from being attached to a cheap battery and left under the dumpster of a nearby restaurant.
Sure, they can find it, but it takes resources away from harassing civilians.
Someone smarter than me could probably design, or link an existing design, to a cheap assembly that broadcast static and made comms harder for these thugs.
There’s also truncing, but some scanners support that. I imagine the op was referring to baofengs from Amazon or something which opens another can of worms
Tell me about that can; I have some of those baofengs.
Legal trouble with the FCC (which I believe is a federal level crime) as another poster mentioned.
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