To me, a bigger issue is social media "scanner" groups or individuals, that basically post everything that comes over the radio publicly. Anchorage has had one of those groups around for years now, and it probably didn't help the case for keeping the channels clear.
Yep, for almost 3 decades now I've been involved with this hobby, the golden rule and I thought about the ONLY law in the books related to scanning just about everywhere was "not to divulge what you were hearing and especially not "broadcast" it to unintended parties".
That still shouldn't be the justification to encrypt everything. They could enforce that law and make people take down their websites and broadcasting. It is never too late. Many agencies and cities have reversed their decisions about this subject and only use encryption in specific channels and sensitive ops like it's always been in places with some common sense and without the "tyrannical tendencies" I've been seeing more prevalent lately. Let me tell you this is NOT the same Alaska I came to over 2 decades ago, especially in the bigger cities.
There's many more things happening in our government at all levels that are affecting or threatening our rights and freedoms as citizens, so what I'm saying it's just not related to their decision to encrypt but that's just the icing on the top of concerns. Now the media and citizens are at the mercy of whatever these departments decide is relevant info to release to the public and that almost always ends up being the decision of a very few people within said departments or government.
That being said, I'm really disappointed they will encrypt Fire/EMS too.
Is not just disappointing but how did they ever went along with that? It's always been known that Fire/EMS does NOT trust even the higher power Trunked analog systems of the past but to now trust Digital Trunked TDMA simulcasted encrypted systems, especially for fireground operations inside buildings? So they likely will use analog conventional frequencies while on-scene is my guess. But still, sounds to me like a lawsuit waiting to happen should anything go wrong with communications. But how will we ever know right?
There's even lawsuits still ongoing from 9/11 incidents where Public Safety couldn't communicate with each other and across different agencies, which is the whole reason the INTEROPERABILITY philosophy started. Now you have several more things to go wrong when trying to communicate with each other. Let's not even get into all the times the radios lose the encryption key and the users don't even know it and they're saying more than they should now that they think nobody can hear them.
But whatever, just like the so-called FCC narrowband mandate, the interoperability thing has been used a marketing scheme to sell departments a bunch of radio equipment they don't really need. The "narrowband mandate" AND interoperability can be achieved with conventional analog too and definitely much cheaper.
....encryption trend will continue, and not just on public safety channels.
What others channels or services are you thinking?
I've been putting money away for the new TRX scanner, but I am strongly reconsidering spending 500+ dollars on something that will stay silent most of the time around where I live.
There's still a lot of other cool and interesting things to listen to out there. And many useful venues to still find out what could be going on out there. Of course, not many as interesting and useful as Public Safety.
