I’m just throwing this out to see if anyone has dealt with this in the past or knows what laws may apply. I’m trying to research this more as well! Very interesting topic OP!!!
…and don't get me wrong. I understand where you are coming from. I've been in this job for 25 years now, 30 in the industry. Our PD is not encrypted yet, but we are going to be. So are all the agencies around us. The radio shop manager (I've known for a long time) and I have been talking about how to handle encryption between agencies. It's complex, but if there are not over inflated egos in the way, sensible adults can quickly work it out.
When it comes to sharing encryption keys between
agencies (not scanner listeners), they are not going to give me keys to load in our radios, even though they know me, they know the chief, they know our officers. They know that once they let the keys out of their hands, they've lost control over who has them. Again, this is between people that have known each other for years, people that have all been background checked/security checked. The way it'll be handled is keys will be loaded into our radios by their guys, and our keys will be loaded into their radios by me. That way there's no gaps in the chain of custody of the keys.
Now, extrapolate that out to how they'd have to do that with scanner listeners….
There are no consumer scanners that will support a keyloader interface. (maybe eventually)
They would need to do background checks on each and every person who wanted their scanner set up with keys. (expensive, and probably many would flunk, then what are they going to do?)
There would need to be some chain of custody of the scanner (impossible….)
Sure, someone could buy their own APX radio and that would support encryption. But what are they going to do about trunking systems? Assuring the person who owns the radio set it up properly for non-affiliate…. (Burden on the agency)
And then what happens when the agency rolls their keys? Someone from the agency is going to have to run around town making sure every scanner owner gets their radios updated?
Every time someone loses/sells their scanner, the agency will have to change keys.
Someone will need to make sure the scanner stays with the person who's been background checked….
Again, I get where you are coming from with this stuff, but so far I haven't seen anyone above who seems to comprehend the logistics of this idea.
The best you can hope for is that said agency will stream radio traffic on the internet. That'll need to have PII redacted, so figure on a delay, and there will be gaps in what you hear.
Or, maybe primary dispatch stays in the clear, if the agency has more than one channel.
Or, radio traffic gets handled over LTE, and you have access to nothing real time.
Or, everything goes encrypted and you'll need to FOIA everything.
No easy answers...