Originally Posted By: GoatMan
You can't encrypt radio communications with commercial radios. It's illegal and commercial equipment isn't capible of it. That is only something the military and select government offices can do. Even the police can't do it. It is prohibited by the FCC. Most people who think they are using a encrypted, secure, private, etc channel are simply using a digital filter or trunked frequency.

FRS, GMRS, MURS, HAM (VHF/UHF) etc are all in the clear. The digital "filters" or "voice privacy scrambler" is only the CTCSS or DCS tone. It helps you filter out others communication. It doesn't keep yours private. If you are set to the same tone you can hear the communication. But so can everyone who is not using any tone (ex. channel 5 privacy channel 0) or anyone with a scanner.

Even police, airports and most government communications that may be on digitally trunked frequencies can be monitored with a digital trunking scanner. Again, the FCC prohibits anything encrypted from going over the airwaves and most radio equipment can't do it anyway.


Actaully police can. There are many people on the scanner forums that complain after uying the r$500 digital scanner that ther area started encrypting so they can't listen again.