Washington DC Mayor turns off encryption on Radio System

Here is an interesting article. I wonder if Milwaukee will ever stop encryption on Open Sky. I myself doubt it but having the public and news media to be able to monitor I think in most cases can be a good thing. This article states that if they want to encrypt some traffic that is not meant for the public they would do that but other than that, all communications would be open to monitoring.

Mayor turns off encryption of Washington DC Fire Radios - Philadelphia In Pictures | Examiner.com

Milwaukee PD is on Open Sky and to my knowledge its not encrypted but there is no scanner or software to decode open sky

I thought it was still encrypted even though no scanner can pick it up.

ka9tgn said:

I thought it was still encrypted even though no scanner can pick it up.

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It is generally accepted that OpenSky can be configured to not use encryption. Whether that is the case in any installation is hard to determine.

The fact that a system/format cannot be decoded or otherwise received with a scanner says nothing to the fact of encryption being in use or not.

Not so commonly known fact: most scanners can usually receive every format and system in their usable band coverage, decoding and listening however is another matter.