Abilene trnking encryption

[garys]

The First Amendment specifically mentions freedom of the press. In theory they could sue claiming that inhibiting their ability to monitor at least the routine police and fire traffic violates that. Whether or not a court would agree is open to debate.

A delayed broadcast would be viable, but I'd guess that they'd want to do that via the internet and not add unencrypted TGs on a delay. If that's even feasible.

Since Austin programmed different TGs when they went to encryption, it could probably be done via the old talk groups with a delay. The problem might be traffic load (for want of a better term) on the system.

A five minute delay would probably be sufficient if public safety is the reason for using encryption.

I might be off base but by law enforcement agencies handing over unencrypted radios to the media, (obviously on that cannot transmit) aren't they engaging in a selective interpretation and or application of the first amendment? I mean, who's to say that members of the MSM can be trusted when it comes to confidentiality of public information? (i.e. "we're the media and we're the good guys") As I've mentioned in previous postings, I completely understand the necessity for TAC and SWAT operations to encrypt their channels or frequencies but by shutting out the general public as a result of locking down their dispatch channels is totally absurd and smacks of a control freakish nature on the part of public officials that the rest of us are supposed to look up to as an example of the straight and narrow. While a 20 to 30 minute delay on dispatch calls isn't exactly ideal, I could certainly live with it if that's all that was available. Chicago PD provides their feed to the public on a 30 minute delay. What's stopping those other agencies that have encrypted their dispatch channels from following that model? And please, don't make any noise regarding the $2.00 (and in some cases free) scanner apps. as that same 20 to 30 minute delay will obviously apply to them as well.