New police digital radio

[weemang]

Is it possible to purchase a scanner that will allow you to listen in to the new police digital radio and also where can you find the frequencies?

[woodchopper]

If its liie the one we have over here (N.I.) - you can't - its a secure network - unless you have one of their radios - which they can trace.

[heathfield]

And it would be entirely illegal.

[buildersmate]

Not sure that it would be illegal, if it were possible, since all one is doing is listening in to the airwaves - not transmitting anything. These digital gadgets will frequency-hop and are almost certainly encoded so its expensive kit that would be required.

[Buenchico]

Nobody has yet found a way to achieve real-time decoding of the encrypted signals of the Airwave system which is now in use by all UK police forces. As the encryption is considerably stronger than that used by satellite TV broadcasters (which is fairly difficult to 'hack'), it's unlikely that the security of the system will ever be breached.

It's an offence under the Wireless Telegraphy Act, 1949 (as amended by countless other pieces of legislation) to listen to any radio transmissions, other than those from authorised broadcasting stations and licensed radio amateurs, unless the listener has authority to do so.

(Back in the days when the emergency services used unencrypted transmissions at the top end of the FM broadcasting band, a group of 'fire chasers' used to listen to the fire brigade broadcasts and travel to the scenes of fires. They were arrested and the court subsequently confiscated both their radios and the cars which they were fitted in).

Additionally, anyone who records (whether electronically or in writing) the content of any police transmission, or conveys the content of that transmission to any other person, will be acting in contravention of the Official Secrets Act. (In certain circumstances, there may also be a breach of the Terrorism Act, 2000).

Chris

[midlander]

hi,ive used and owned scannes for years,police in the uk used to transmit on fm and could be picked up quite easily on almost any scanner up until about three years ago.now they mostly transmit on a digital tetra signal which no scanner made can pick up.
it may be possible to use a computer based scanner such as icom and pc decoding software.

[mrknowall]

http://www.last.fm/music/Stevie+Wonder/_/Happy +Birthday

[mrknowall]

sorry wrong post

[dinoboxer]

As a serving police officer I can tell you that it is not possible to scan the new type police radios. Even if you were able to aquire one would not help because there is a system whereby should one be lost or stolen it can be cooked by sending a signal to it thus rendering the unit useless. My force will cook a phone after 48hrs of the unit going missing

[info999]

It actually could be possible. The system works on O2 mobile network. What the police have is a private network which requires a SIM cad logged on to that network. it has 16 pins which are always changing and 4 code types. Only way to do it would be to hack the network with a computer and take over the server or buy a control system whcih would cost about �200,000.
You can buy the actual phones the police use, but need the SIM card to get on the network. If you know someone who can programme the card for the police then great, but will need to remove the chip that deactivates it and bridge the connections