Encryption feels like its intended to suppress speech or hide misconduct but act like its to safeguarding sensitive data or officer safety.

Visalia Police Department justified encryption by citing a 2020 California Department of Justice mandate requiring the protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) transmitted over radio, like names, addresses, and driver’s license numbers. The department argued that full encryption was the most practical way to comply, given the logistical challenges of alternatives like dedicating a separate channel for PII or using cell phones, which could strain dispatchers or compromise officer safety.

many police departments use separate radio channels to handle sensitive data, The article mentions they explored dedicating a separate channel for PII, but dismissed it as impractical. Their reasoning was that officers would need to constantly switch between channels during calls say, from a public channel for initial response to a secure one for names or addresses which could overwhelm dispatchers or lead to errors under pressure. They also worried about the cost and complexity of maintaining dual systems, especially for a smaller department like Visalia’s, which might not have the budget or staffing of, say, LAPD or NYPD. Instead, they went all-in on encryption, arguing it’s simpler and ensures compliance with the California DOJ’s 2020 mandate to safeguard PII.

I’ve listened to scanners myself, and you can feel the delay when they flip frequencies; it’s not seamless, and that’s a legitimate challenge for police operations. However, the public should still know what is going on, rather than just hearing about it later in the news. Speaking of the news, many news outlets also utilize police scanners to get on scene, which could be seen as preserving freedom of the press and require FOIA Requests later.

Doctored FOIA Requests When a citizen records the police, the police often respond dismissively, saying things like ‘Oh, that’s cute good for you recording me.’ They emphasize that they also have body cameras and that everything is being recorded, even before they arrived on the scene.

The issue with Police CCTV and Citizen CCTV is the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests and the time it takes to obtain police footage. Moreover, police often edit their CCTV recordings before releasing them. When you request the full video, they often edit out audio and large portions of video content. In contrast, when a citizen records, every part of the audio and video remains intact.

This creates problems when FOIA requests are made for radio transmissions and other footage later on.

All in all, it feels like they got lazy and didn’t want to invest the time and effort into creating a better system. Instead, they framed it as being necessary to safeguard officer safety or to ‘protect traffic stops’ and ‘ensure privacy when reporting domestic violence at home.

Something I rarely, if ever, hear about in the news is criminals using police scanners to evade law enforcement. It seems like a convenient excuse a ‘cop-out,’ if you will (no pun intended). it is framed as a justification for restricting public access to police scanners plain and simple.

using a police scanner in the process of committing a crime can result in additional charges and harsher sentencing. In many jurisdictions, it’s considered a separate offense or an aggravating factor that can escalate the severity of penalties for the crime being committed.

Just wait until bad guys start using “Meshtastic devices”, homemade radios built with ESP boards. You think this is bad, but that could be even worse.