Why are police scanners legal?

Question

It seems like the police wouldn't want non-police listening in?

Answer 1

Police scanners can be illegal, depending on how they're used. You can't have them in your car and you can't use them as assistance in committing a crime. For example: Robbers using them to find the location of the police to choose a store to rob, or drug dealers using them to know when the police are coming to raid them. The easy way to get around that is being selective what we say over the radio. Since most of us now have wireless computers and cell phones, the scanners are pretty much obsolete, anyway. I use scanners to my advantage. Dispatch knows that when I say I'm in a certain area over the radio, it really means I'm somewhere else in the county.

Answer 2

Are Police Scanners Legal

Answer 3

1

Answer 4

Police scanners are legal.
The laws around this have evolved (and continue to do so) but scanner laws are, for the most part state laws, not federal. Some states you can't use a scanner while driving and a few others if you use a scanner while committing another crime you can be charged in addition to whatever crime you're committing.

Answer 5

Brian C. has a very creative imagination indeed. I many localities scanners are lawful in a vehicle, if they are not all a person needs to do is acquire an Amateur radio license and drive until they get tired. Some police communications systems are scrambled and cannot be listened to or at least listened to easily. Add in spread spectrum and frequency hopping and the older scanners without capabilities without these same modes and abilities are incapable of following any such system police or otherwise.

We in the USA have the Constitution which allows us to listen to police signals without repercussions therein, for the most part.
Since two school teachers in Florida listened in on several congressmen several years ago the legislature has seen fit to outlaw listening to cell phones, but that is mostly moot today with all the improvements in technology listening to cells has become extremely difficult anyway. Of course various government agencies are exempt with recent laws allowing them to listen in on even your private chats with a wife, girlfriend, husband, or any other person that is highly unlikely to plot the over throw of the government or a terrorist attack like 9/11. Homeland security has removed any vestige of privacy we in the USA once had and cherished.

Answer 6

Police scanners ARE legal. It is legal to LISTEN to police communications, but you can't transmit on their frequencies.
The police don't plan any secret things on publicly available frequencies. It's mostly used for just saying that a unit is going somewhere, but at least where I live, I never hear that anything is "going down."

Police scanners are getting harder to hear though, because they're migrating to frequencies which are harder to listen to, because you need a more expensive scanner. But mostly, everything important is encrypted, and you can't listen to that. Breaking that encryption is illegal.

Answer 7

That's precisely why they are legal.

Whether or not the police want people listening, the airwaves are public property, and the police are public servants.

When police stop operating in the open (as is beginning to happen), and when people aren't permitted oversight, we are headed toward fascism.

Scanners also serve other purposes than listening to police; you can listen to weather, other public service organisations, and businesses.

The airwaves are considered public, and any information sent over them does not presume privacy. Some bands are blocked on most scanners, including some military bands and cell phones (where privacy is presumed), but all other frequencies are to be considered non-private.

Answer 8

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RE:
Why are police scanners legal?
It seems like the police wouldn't want non-police listening in?

Answer 9

because it's a radio scanner, and is used by many enthusiasts for other things (shuttle launches, trains, planes, etc.) and unless the people actually have training of some sort, what the cops are saying isn't going to help them. also, for important things, cops can use a secure channel. a scanner is a radio. if you couldn't have a scanner, you could just buy a CB or ham radio and do the same thing.

Answer 10

Because it is public information. There is nothing illegal about listening, however, you cannot transmit over their channels.

Most departments use codes just for this reason. The codes are considered confidential, and they can change frequently , depending on department. In addition to radios, police (and fire) also use cell phones, CAD systems (an IM of sorts between cruiser and dispatch) and Nextels for very sensitive information (i.e rapes, sudden deaths, juveniles, raids, etc.) just so the average joe doesn't know what is going on.