let me ask a dumb question about encryption. Is the reason current scanners are incapable of monitoring the frequencies because it is not popular enough for the scanner manufacturers to build a work around or is it going to be a permanent problem and unsolvable for consumer scanner sales? Thanks
First, monitoring encrypted signals when you're not a party to the conversation is prohibited by Federal law. That alone means you'll never see any commercially available means to do so.
That being said, there is a difference between
clear P25 digital transmissions and
encrypted P25 digital transmissions. Clear P25 digital transmissions are unencrypted, can be monitored, and there are scanners available which are capable of doing so; however, other transmissions are encrypted (meaning the digital bits are all mixed up) for the simple reason that the user doesn't want unauthorized listening.
Not only is unauthorized decryption of encrypted signals illegal, but a conversation can be encrypted using any one of millions of possible encryption keys (the digital code which allows a radio to decrypt an encrypted transmission). On top of that, most radios are capable of using multiple encryption keys and allowing the user to select which key to use. As such, figuring out the encryption key even if doing so weren't illegal would be extremely difficult, at best.