This is an example of what I see as typical british over policing. Cover up your own incompetence at security by converting people doing no harm into criminals.
It's pretty much everywhere... Pretty sure US's TSA is just that… as a consequence of the 9/11 failure… there's more elsewhere where the People's Rights ain't as secured I'm sure...
In the late 90's, I had 2.4GHz CCTV cameras. One day, I was watching the recording and it switched to an aerial view of my area - I could even see my house. I realised the Police Helicopter must be using 2.4GHz as their downlink, presumably to officers on the ground.
The pearl-clutching about listening is is comical. But, I see the brit hopes of banning different kinds of knives and police entertaining complaints about public filming of piano players. Comedy continues. Thanks for your work, Lewis!
Never ever vote socialists into power because as bad as they are the venal and cowardly mainstream conservatives don't have the spine to repeal what the socialists did but accept it as "the new normal".
This brings back memories in the early 90s I had a blind friend whom used CB he'd drop onto the HAM bands now and then and come talk to a lot of us but.. the big thing I remember him doing was he had a realistic pro scanner, that he used to listen in on the police & cordless house phones on. He had one of the old style discones on the roof of his home at the time. He's no longer with us now sadly but he was a lovely character, always happy, even when he lost his legs. I believe his equipment still lives with his wife & daughter.
Yep I used to listen to the old pre-dect phones. Will never forget hearing a couple have phone sex and the girl say in a brummie accent "that was officially the quietest orgasm I have ever had" 😂🤣 or the little kid on a baby monitor running around a house shouting "daddy is a kvl\|t" over and over again. Used to be able to listen to mobiles too up in the 900's during the 90's. I was an intercept operator in the royal sigs in the early 90's and some habits die hard!
I can remember in the mid 90s listening to Police on an airband radio. It was very addictive listening. I had this old Steepletone radio that worked well. Its all Tetra radio now. Nice video
Bank in the 1990s, whenever a dignitary would be coming to Houston (where I lived), my HouScan frequency website would get a visit from a Department of Justice (FBI, etc.). I guess they were checking to see if we had access to any of the sensitive channels they were using. Ironically, they used the City of Houston dog catcher frequency to coordinate the protective detail since nobody ever listened to that channel, much less thought to look there for such sensitive traffic!
There was a couple of old men that lived in rural areas near me. Their houses were at a 90 degree, low speed curve. When the police were chasing a car they knew a crash was imminent. They got the shotgun and waited for the thug to crash. Then they hold them at gunpoint till the police caught up. Oh how the 70’s and 80’s were fun for some scanner owners. Then came the trunking scanners with the cell phone craze. There were hundreds of people that were caught cheating on the spouse by the scanner folks.
While waiting to pickup repeater equipment from a radio shop I learned that local police detectives rented space/access to a commercial radio system. This was in the 90s. I guess they felt their communication was more secure buried in the traffic of delivery vans, plumbers, etc. No idea if this is still done.
As an American this seems strange for me. Any form of public service is freely able to be listened to the public. Police, city, state, utility, and pretty much anything. There is no expectation to privacy other than military. For which you can listen but wont have the encryption or licenses to do.
As a kid staying at my grandparents I would lay in bed in the back bedroom with my Hitachi twin cassette sw mw and 88 to 106 vhf fm band...I had a bit of wire on the telescopic antenna used to listen to VOA Vatican radio ..Radion Sweden and allsorts on hf. But interestingly living in Barnsley South Yorkshire at the time I could pick up Barnsley C.I.D around the 100mhz ish area had hours of interesting listening.
Late on, during the end of the analogue era, the police introduced the MASC voice encryption. However, this was easilly defeated. Some monitors also had transmit facilities, and would briefly jam the police transmissions during the data transmission designed to enable the encryption. So not all radios on the network went into secure mode. That meant that operators lost confidence in the system and stopped using it. Enabling monitors to continue to listen. There was also an interesting S band PAL video feed from the police helicopters in the Dorset area. This did use VideoCrypt scrambling. But as this had already been cracked, by people wanting free access to early Sky TV satellites. Also they transmitted in clear when they used their mobile command vehicle for big events. As they only had one decryption rig. This link disappeared for a couple of years in the mid 2000's, rumored to have moved to DVB on 3.4GHz, but we never found it. But later analogue returned on S band in the clear. Our assumption was that the replacement C band system had failed and the brought the S band out of retirement. But had already disposed of the decryption rack. We say about a year of interesting footage after that.
I remember when our force migrated to Airwave, the air/ground part was delayed and air/ground comms were via FM Simplex on 138MHz. There was a high profile MISPER case in which most of the community were involved in the search, and every now and then gold would pop up on the air reminding all officers that ear pieces must be worn at all times, due to the nature of the search blah blah etc. Anybody with a cheap scanner could have heard what was going on, and i'm pretty sure the community that were helping the search would have had access to some scanners.....
Ours (QH88) used 88 AG. The 2.4GHz downlink was good, until it got digitised and encrypted. As an aside, I installed the downlink antenna for Herts on top of their tower at HQ many years ago...
In my country, police communication is carried out on 173-174 MHz. They were also unencrypted for a very long time and could be listened to quite freely.
Met Police beat bobbies had bodyworn radio as far back as 1969, which you can see during "Don't Let Me Down" by The Beatles when the police turn up to the rooftop gig. There was also an episode of Heartbeat which centred around some armed robbers listening in on the police to evade capture. That "Late 90s" BBC News footage is from 2002, though. The BBC weren't using that set design in the 1990s and 2002 was the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee Tour.
I remember being able to push my stereo above the FM broadcast band and get a police frequency in NE London. Must have been late 80s or early 90s. It must have been some odd bending of the tuning circuit to pull the frequency up higher than it was meant to go. I think above the MW band I got wireless phones.
In the early 1980s the FM Broadcast band stopped at about 100MHz. That was why they couldn't find room for Radio 1 on FM. Some Police channels were just above 100MHz.
Thanks RM. Your Videos are So well planned out and Very Informative. This One was Full of Awesome Information and Things I have Never Seen or Heard Before. Thanks Again and Take Care. Radio ON*****
Remember listening on a normal radio (but I lived just behind MPS KE -East Ham when they had local CAD rooms) they had the Storno sets back then (have one in my collection) and then they moved over to the Motorola MTS2000 UHF sets (have a few of these too).
My mother-in -law disapproved of my past-time but i used to justify what i did by saying to her that if radio waves are entering my house, then i have every right to know their content, that shut her up - for a couple of minutes, anyway !
Look at it from the other perspective. I can't believe the US is allegedly the only democracy that doesn't have legislation in place to protect your privacy which attempt to regulate powers of interception to only those with a warrant or acting for the purposes of national security. Allegedly, as I bet the US does indeed have laws regarding the above.
@@thes764Yup. Belgium, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, just to name a few. The main reason being that countries are technically obligated to ban scanning under the ITU Radio Regulations. I'm glad many other countries ignore that.
Another interesting point is that BEFORE 02-Airwave as it was know, there were tests as far back as 1991 with a UK wide analogue system. I remember listening to tests were officers in the North West were "patched through" to officers in the Midlands. From 451MHz to whatever the other frequency was and I was able to hear both sides as it was a talkthrough conversation. This was experimented with for a while and trunking was meant to have been introduced across the UK, but funding stopped it. It was put on hold and encryption was used on radios that needed it and officers were using more and more mobile phones to take jobs and do checks so the public didn't hear. The pans to expand the national linked analogue system just fell apart, then we got TETRA. I think this was after the system called Dolphin Tetra set up throughout the UK and people got really interested in what it could do. I had a Dolphin TETRA handheld radio that worked on what is now DABradio frequencies, known as Band 3 back in 1994. That system allowed me to call a colleague anywhere in the country. It was brilliant, well ahead of Community Repeaters that were all still analogue. Mobile phones did kill off the PMR business!
The good ole days. I remember listening to Mike 1 or Mike 99 (Merseyside Police Helicopter), also the days where you could listen to analog mobile phones and listen to people having affairs 🙂
The list at 1:55 made me lol. I had a pair of studio monitors that were so bad that under certain atmospheric conditions I could pick up the coastguard and local airport.
The good old days of monitoring the local Police forces on VHF /UHF radio. frequencies. Our County (Lancs) was the first Force in the Country to migrate over to the Tetra UK EMS Airwave Service back in 2001, (then MM02) along with the Ambulance and Fire service afterwards. They started using the Motorola mtp300 HT, a huge difference from the Pye PFX, I think the initial rollout took around 5 years for the rest of the UK 'blue light EMS following suit. Specialist units used MASC radios. The Met used a system known as Motorola' Smartzone' Trunking system as Lewis mentions, before they migrated over to the Airwave Service. Tetra is a very secure system using the ETSI TEA2 encryption algorithm for network authentication amongst other encryption key protocols. Always remember UHF CH88 AGA (Oscar November 21), ASU when they were using Analogue systems. The English HM Prison service use the Airwave Service with encryption, but the Scottish Prison Service uses Class 1 Clear Tetra, which can be monitored with an SDR.
Our poilce in Staffordshire had introduce MASC voice encryption. Newcastle under lyme police and stoke and all the other town used it. I remember a police office telling me they stopped using the encryption because they could not hear one another. Some in the late 1990s they change to a system called Smartnet that was a trunking system on VHF 154 to 156 MHz. I could here most of the conversation sometimes. But if other officers started talking you would here them. They had 3 channels used a a scanner trap with a voice repeating scanner trap 1 or 2 and then it changed to a horrible noise. Staffordshire firebrigade all used the same frequencies so the firebrigade could talk to the police. I think some other users was going to join the smartnet system but never happen so they discontinued and moved over to Airwave. I remember Staffordshire headquarters call sign was YF and the firebrigade was YG. When the police moved to Smartnet the call sign was YN. Not sure why it was. The local policestation remained the same. I know Hanley was TC Tango Charle and part of that unit was Traffice police. Newcaslte was MA or Mike Alfa. When I first heard the police on UHF I had no idea who it was. Untill I heard someone on about catching some and making an arrest two streets away from then I new it was Newcastle Under Lyme police. I read there changing the system again from Airwave to another mobile encrypted system. I know a few who moan and say the police should remain on the old analogue system. But that outdated and they have the right to encrypt everything. I remember the day when Staffordshire police was broad casting were Radio 1 is now until they moved top 154.050 MHz. Then radio moved onto 97.5 around 1990 with test transmissions. Then Classic FM started doing test around 100 MHz. There is not as much to listen to now. There is DMR or DMR Plus a turning systems. But thanks to people who keep putting things on websites. A lot have gone encryted like our local shop watch. They spoil it fo the hobbists.
As a kid I remember tuning in on my grans radiogramme to listen to police, I think it had to be AM radio. As a special constable I attended an incident with a sergeant. Turned into a serious crime and I was posted outside to control entry. I was told to keep my radio off so people couldn't hear what was going on. This meant I also didn't know who was arriving. No worries, the lad across the road opened his window and shouted updates to his mates and me. Obviously listening on a scanner.
I remember in the '80s/early '90s, my walkman could pick up Sussex Police just outside the broadcast radio frequencies. I do know Sussex police (at least up until a few years ago, so may still be in place), maintained their VHF FM system, I knew the guy who, is/was civilian staff, that was in charge of keeping it in working condition, in case for any reason, the Airwave/Tetra systems went down, so I guess other forces may also have maintained their VHF radio systems. Not tried scanning for it, but he said they did emit a beacon to keep the frequency clear.
IIRC VHF is nuke friendly-ish?? so that might be the “code black” contingency plan for DOD and Police. (using US hospital emergency designate code here)
@@PrograError Quite possibly. The radios and repeaters would be safe in a faraday cage, but not out in the open, in the event of a EMP from nuke, sun or other source, however, nothing wrong with going old school for back up though.
@@asp383 I'd say the bigger issue is the antennas and suitable facility as HQ or FOB.. These days, building ain't as bulletproof as those WWII - cold war transition period brick/ concrete buildings... it's a lot lightweight...
@@PrograError That is true, although the VHF antennas should be safe, if correct length to be correctly tuned and resonant for the frequencies used, as just a length of wire would theoretically do the job, no need for any vulnerable electronics once out of the transceiver. Yes, a lot of the buildings are very fragile, although a few still use decent strong "old" buildings that would withstand quite a bit
My scanners back in the 90's picked up way more than my more modern gear. From cell phones to police bands, I could hear it all back then. Now? Not so much. Systems have changed I have not been keeping up with the changes for over almost two decades now.
What scanners didn't realise was that there was a lot of set ups. It wasn't unusual to say that a securty van had crashed and there was cash blowing all over the road. The police would wait to see who turned up, they were then arrested, then when they tried to deny it, their fingerprints were taken from the batteries.
Showing up isn't evidence of anything. So unless the UK police are allowed to search without cause, that's the worst sting ever. Sounds like a good way to arrest a bunch of innocent people. You can't just assume anyone who comes into your setup is guilty. If there's zero evidence you don't get to just start searching people and taking prints. Your either entirely wrong. Or the UK is a police state at nazi Germany level were they can stop and check anyone.
Litterally all you have to do in court is ask why they took your fingerprints. What evidence they had prior. And boom case thrown out for illegal search. Police searching private property without some form of probable/reasonable cause is illegal in basically every modern democracy.
@@mmboiler10 Perso shows up to the scene with a scanner blaring. arrested for suspicion of listening to private communications, necessity for a prompt investigation and to prevent loss of evidence. Scanner seized as evidence of that offence The suspect raises the defence that it wasn't their scanner Line of enquiry is followed to check this defence, forensics performed and batteries finger printed. Not illegal by any stretch of the imagination
When metradio came in I think airwave was already on the drawing board anyway was only supposed to be a short term system after the 147 mhz station freqs where rest of uk used 450 mhz
I remember as a kid turning the black and white portable TV dial down to the bottom to listen to police. Purely by accident of course. A lot of the time you could only hear half of the conversation.
The Motorola Smart Zone system explains a lot of Airwave design decisions. You can see a lot of the older UHF system implemented similarly in a Airwave.
Ust to get the police on a decent stereo receiver with mechanical tuning towards the end of its range. Had to be carfull with earphones on got loud feedback around ther to. 40 years ago now 👍
WHAT I HEARD: _"...by listening in on conversations..."_ WHAT I THOUGHT: *Hello, ENCRYPTION??!!* From 1988 to 2000 I was an enlisted aircrewman in the US Coast Guard. We had encryption on certain aircraft radio systems, although in my particular job I virtually never dealt with them personally. _"We have the technology."_ -- THE SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN
My dad had a 20ft aerial bolted to the side of the house, and a big scanner box thing when I was growing up. A book of all the different frequencies for everything for the UK from ambulance to the AA. Growing up where I did it was good for knowing where to avoid after a bombing or shooting. The news never told the truth even then. 😉
For the official users of the radio systems it must have been complicated too, selecting the right channel based on location and circumstances. With TETRA based systems and talkgroups there is still 'radio discipline' to be learned. And you want officers to do the right thing automatically in an emergency.
i had a crt tv early 90s when tuning my mega drive in i found out the tv would receive police radios it was mad. that gave me the bug to buy Realistic Pro-26 Hand Held Scanner.
It was great back then. I'm in the US and remember when they locked out certain bands on the scanners around the early 90s because of the growing use of Cellular phones. I remember there was a mod for the unlocked scanners by which you could grab the ESN from an AMPS cell phone, and this was used for fraud. AMPS used a few seperate channels, one for voice, one for control. But they both sent out stuff in the the clear! So anyway they locked out the bands on these in the early 90s, but here's the catch-- they didn't do it in Canada because they use different bands up there for that stuff. So one short holiday dad gets the idea to go up to Toronto, just to ride the train. I happily agree, and visited Radio Shack in Toronto to plunk down $250 for a new BearCat scanner. Now I think they patched the ESN vulnerability, but I wasn't interested in fraud anyway, I just wanted an unlocked scanner *JUST BECAUSE*. This whole thing really irritated me because it's the Mobile Phone engineers/companies that should eat dirt, not the entire rest of humanity. Ban something from ME simply because you got your engineering degree out of a cracker jack box???? It was really irritating to say the least!
Some police used scramblers in the radios, they knew in 1988 that people were listening in. It was a crude speech inversion and they were available for most of the PMR radios in use.
As an American this seems strange for me. Any form of public service is freely able to be listened to the public. Police, city, state, utility, and pretty much anything. There is no expectation to privacy other than military. For which you can listen but wont have the encryption or licenses to do.
In Grimsby in the 90s I used to be able to hear the police in the middle of the FM dial, but only one half of the conversation. Would this have been a harmonic? I don't see why they would still have been using this frequency in the 90s !
Hi Lewis , great interesting video, on the main set system ch14 and 15 were never installed although under the high band system the channels allocated, ch9 were for in the tunnels only with ch12 . Ch10 was used for additionally for public order events and stadium events , we had interim scheme and we had the Quarsi system for the main set . The channel numbers were passed over from the old low band system . Before we had Met Radio the Motorola trunk system we had the Divisional vhf personal radio system in 155mhz input and 147Mhx output using cctss - sub audio tones , although the same channel was used twice but the system was engineered in different parts of London . We also had the public operations channel POC, for all demos portions football events etc, during any public order event the storno 800 radio could be changed from their division channel to the poc Ch on there radio. After Hillsborouh it was deemed that each stadium had its own uhf channel and control room . This was 464mhz input and 450 451 mhz output also using cctss , During when these systems not in use we reused those channels for operations for major events. There were also set to set simplex channels used for other units and dept 147mhz, there was an air to ground channel also used . Regards mark
147 am or fm depending on county set up motorcycle escorts 147.875 9125, but fm by seg in London then higher ones used still by tsg van to van even during metradio days u coukd gear tag van to van comms on 147, then also. Other special, users up there too The air to gnd got the old spare uhf channels ch88 89 etc
Newer standards are going to have AES/DES standards up to 4096 bits or larger. New developments in microchip and SoC are allowing this in more expensive radios, some of them are not for sale to the public. 5G only has AES-256 encryption as an example to comparison. The downside of analogue radio was that it was all open or had poor encryption.
Back in the day it was part of the job for editors at newspapers to listen in trying to get the hot goss before print deadline. After digital they just went straight to hacking phones for their gossip... looking at you Murdoch.
I live in a notorious hood in a murder capitol in California, I listen to po po channels to find out if the ruckus and helicopters up the street are heving to do with anyone I know and if it's safe to go to the ghetto corner store for an emergency can of price gouged cat food.
I think it's funny that they had their "crime prevention officers" to come round our houses and point out our appallingly bad home security. Yet, at the same time, they were desperately in need of a visit from the equivalent of a CPO regarding electronic/communications security.
I think that listening to police should be a metod to avoid bad policing by law enforcement, you should do your work better if you know that the public can listen to you. Of course if you use the informations you listen for criminal activities you should be punish... That's my idea
IMO the regular patrol unit should be on standard radios, but with alternates encrypted for the pursuits or task force related situations. Sure, you can listen to the patrol ringing up the idiots who speed the red lights, but operations should be under wraps as it is...
@@arthurtwoshedsjackson6266 I know that. the point I am making is our services are trying to be secure yet the MP's are complete donuts with security...... and always have been
@@Boodieman72 It protects the identity of victims and suspects, it also prevents the scene of an incident being obstructed by "sightseers". It was made illegal by sections 1 (establishing a wireless telegraphy station without authority) and 5 (receipt of a message the receipt of which is not authorised) of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 1949.
For the Americans who are aghast at the British crackdown on listening to unencrypted police radio, know that police here in the U.S. are rapidly deploying encryption to prevent public monitoring. Most agencies already have encrypted "tactical channels," but most police agencies where I live, in Johnson County, Kansas, moved to full encryption at the beginning of this year. The argument from police in the city of Lenexa was, “This policy will help protect the privacy of those individuals, including victims, witnesses, and suspects, whose personal information is transmitted over a police radio." Critics have (quite rightly) called foul and said full encryption will stifle what little police transparency we have. One local freelance reporter who writes stories for local news outlets based on what he overhears pointed out that we're already missing out on details. From a story on KCUR: "Other times, the logs may not reflect a serious situation that needs to be reported on, he said. Frizzell showed how Shawnee Police’s call log in December made no mention of an armed standoff in which the equivalent of a SWAT team was called out. In that case, a man was charged with attempted capital murder."
Similar things are happening here in CT with some departments encrypting all of the channels. There are groups that are pushing back that as a publicly funded agency, the communications should be able to be monitored by the public for transparency and accountability. Most aren't apposed to one encrypted channel for tactical purposes, but it should only be used under certain circumstances and not the norm.
But there's still quite a few who don't encrypt / time delay general radio traffic... Cleveland, Los Angeles, NYPD, Chicago, Minneapolis, Houston (Detectives, IA, Counter Terrorism are encrypted). Some departments implement a time delay of 30 to 60 minutes.
Back in the late 90s we had a 2way scanner,if the police were within say 500metres you could talk back to them,i had a police car behind me ready to pull me and a freind in a car behind the police car,my freind knew i was about to be pulled and called up immediate assistance on the radio,officer chasing,the officer behind me put his blue lights on to go assist this bogus call and i was away free🤣
