Good grief, talk about being alarmists and completely over-exaggerating reality just to make a point.
There are literally tens of thousands of conventional channels and trunked talkgroups to listen to. Yes, all public safety, and all in the clear.
I just casually looked through a bunch of the countywide trunked systems in central and south Jersey, and I see
countless talkgroups that are not encrypted, in particular Fire/EMS. Sure, there's an undeniable trend towards securing law enforcement traffic, but overall there is still a ton of worthwhile stuff to listen to...not just school buses and plow trucks.
Incidentally, a very large number of scanner listeners have zero interest in listening to cops run tags from traffic stops all day and night, and prefer to listen to Fire/EMS, which as noted above are usually in the clear even when law enforcement is encrypted on the same system. Assuming that your personal monitoring preferences apply to everyone else is quite the myopic point of view.
Let's please stop being alarmists crying
"the sky is falling, the sky is falling!" I get that some of you are inconsolably distraught that your local or favorite law enforcement agency maybe went dark and you haven't found anything else worth listening to, but perhaps you should try to look at it objectively. Actually take a look at a large sampling of these P25 systems and realize just how many talkgroups are
not encrypted. Consider the probability that you might just be in the minority, and that there are still many happy listeners shelling out good money every day on these scanners.
