This does seem to be the impression a small percentage of the population believe - and borders on paranoia. However, the entire world has got very hot on rights - and rights always advantage one party or another. They can be trivial to some - like the notion that music should be free and the musicians are being unreasonable for wanting paying. It's very common on things like Facebook for people to want music at events and offer 'exposure' not money, and the musicians say no are vilified. We now have Police body cams, but also body cams on people at checkouts in stores? The world changes. We expect privacy, yet the law accepts that expecting privacy in some circumstances is unreasonable.
Moving to radio, if the law allows interception of radio comms as legitimate, then it's OK. The people having their comms intercepted also have the right under law to encrypt it? If they accept people listen in and use some kind of code, that works, but it's easier and simpler to press the encrypt button, once, and for good. The argument that people doing bad deeds should be protected and not be revealed has for and against. Do criminals also lose privacy? Sometimes they do. Maybe it's a scale?
Should the comms in a shoe shop be made private - all those "try a 10" calls?
Should the comms in a school be made private - John Smith's parents at apartment B 12 cross road have been called away but have left the back door open?
Should the Police comms be made private - Fred Jones the murderer is in a cafe at the bottom of Cliff Hill?
I suspect most would see the problem with the school one, but how about the murderer or his friends being tipped off.
I doubt anyone would object to messages about potential terrorist attacks being encrypted? However a few rights people might even consider this one wrong?
I've been selling radios for years that have had a tick box in the software saying encrypt, but I never ticked it. Now, people are asking the question "can this radio be made secure from eavesdropping?" - I say yes, tick the box, and locally the scanner users lose another. I have even done somethings that might even be wrong? I sell lots of marine kit. Many boats have open VHF marine radios AND DMR systems that they use for safety specific stuff to do with offshore work they want kept private. A few have asked me to put the ordinary marine channels in the DMR radio, so they only have one radio. Here in the UK, we don't have formal type approval, only a requirement for equipment to be able to meet the spec in terms of the usual interference, power, spurious emissions etc - a DMR radio meets most of those requirements, and I've done a few for these customers.
None of this is some kind of Government led removal of rights or some secrecy program - it's just common sense. Everyone believes in some degree of secrecy in their lives nowadays, but some believe EVERYTHING is a secret unless it isn't while others believe nothing is a secret unless it has to be?
All those people using GMRS who believe the secrecy codes mentioned on the boxes really make their conversations secret. For many, that is why they bought them! The American 'We the People' is so quaint now. I worry my own Government is too easy on rights, and there are people here pushing for us to unlink fro the European Court of Human Rights, which many of us believe is protecting the bad and not protecting the weak.
