For decades, hobbyists have been able to listen to fire and police communications. But during the past 10-20 years, they’ve switched to encrypted communications: King County police and fire agencies prepare to encrypt their radios | The Seattle Times
The media notes they have long used radio scanners to find out what was going on in their communities and what to report.
Where I live, the police and sheriff are already encrypted but the State Patrol is not. Fire operations remain open for listening (so far). As a ham radio operator and scanner listener, I have for a long time listened to fire dispatch while out and about – to avoid places that have bad car crashes or other incidents! I didn’t want to end up stuck in traffic!
Some agencies are offering kind-of work arounds, such as carrying their dispatch channel as a time delayed streaming service on the Internet. But not all do that.
Regardless, the era of the radio scanning hobbyist is probably coming to an end.
