Hi there! I'm the owner and operator of Broadcastify, which is the platform that powers all the apps that provide police scanners and public safety communications online. I'm an active HN reader and would be glad to answer any questions folks have. It's an interesting business to be in these days...
Thank you so much for the possibility. I grew up with scanners and am truly reminiscing while listening on these intercepts.
Here in Europe there is close to no police still using analog and listening to air traffic control or couriers just does not cut it for me.
Bought the app, hope you'll be able to keep this up.
Most of our local departments use encrypted radios. "Over the past few years, an increasing number of municipalities and police departments, including the District’s, have begun encrypting their radioed communications.."[1.] https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/last-of-t...
Completely outside of my area of expertise, so this may be a silly question, but are police transmissions distinguishable from others in their encrypted form? If so, there could still be a use case for knowing _where_ the cops are. Wonder if some sort of mesh could be used to triangulate the positions of these signals.
Outside of my area as well, but, IIRC Kevin Mitnick wrote about using a radio set to encrypted frequencies. When he was out and about, if he heard traffic on those frequencies, then he knew the FBI etc. must be nearby.
Hi there! I'm the owner and operator of Broadcastify, which is the platform that powers all the apps that provide police scanners and public safety communications online. I'm an active HN reader and would be glad to answer any questions folks have. It's an interesting business to be in these days...
Is there a way to listen to the broadcasts in a web browser without Flash Player?
I remember as a young kid my family, and a few others, had police scanners. It was fairly interesting and you got a feel for which of your neighbors were trouble. A lot of my relatives were rural fire department volunteers so the scanners were a useful warning before the actual alarm page was sent out. I do remember one of my relatives drove out to pick up a cop on a back road when his cruiser died, or the night they…
> or the night they chased a light all over hell and back Please elaborate.
Well, this is a couple decades ago - so the play-by-play is a bit lost, one cop at a locally infamous speed trap after dark started seeing a light in the woods near the road. He reported it over the radio, and speculated it might be someone spotlighting deer. Hunting deer at night is very, very illegal as the deer freeze when the light is shined at them. He didn't hear shots, but was understandably reluctant to pursue the light by himself as people committing illegal acts that are obviously armed might be unsocial. Another two patrol cars showed up and they decided to surround the area where the light was. The "light", when flushed by the officers, took off down the road. The officers only saw the light and not what is was attached to nor did they hear an engine. This pursuit went from road, to another field, down the side of a river, and back into the wooded area. The light would turn on and off traveled at high speed about four feet off the ground. They finally lost sight of it outside town, last seen headed down the road. Apparently some folks called in sightings (land line days to the dispatcher), but the latency made these a bit unhelpful and the officers did comment that some of the callers might not be trusted observers and some might be ..uhm.. less than perceptive having their head inappropriately situated. The officers did say some words that were not strictly professional and threatened all manner of violence on whoever was behind this. It probably cost them some revenue as they were not available to assure the public's safe speed particularly after the bars closed. They did not catch the light nor did it happen again.
With the rise of corporate censorship I don't think its wise to rely on app stores for access to police frequencies. Dedicated radios that monitor police frequencies are widely available and you don't need an amateur license to use one (since you're only listening, not transmitting). My city is on 700MHz P25 which requires a fairly pricey radio, but its been worth every penny over the past week. After listening in la…
You don't have to rely on app stores... Broadcastify is the platform that powers all these apps, and they are online at https://www.broadcastify.com
Police scanning channels are a good way of gaining information about local political activity in your area.
I think at some point you'll feel the pressure to censor those feeds as a way to limit information about demonstrations that aren't approved by the ruling class.
Hi there! I'm the owner and operator of Broadcastify, which is the platform that powers all the apps that provide police scanners and public safety communications online. I'm an active HN reader and would be glad to answer any questions folks have. It's an interesting business to be in these days...
Is there a way to listen to the broadcasts in a web browser without Flash Player?
We’ve abandoned flash as our default player long ago in favor of html5 audio. I’m not sure why you’d be seeing flash as a default unless you previously set flash as your default player.
My Grandmother had a police scanner that she used to listen to drama going on in her small town in Virginia. Old ladies with police scanners is still quite common. It sparked an interest and my parents got me one as a Christmas present. I spent many years in the IBM ecosystem as an technical SE, but developed an online database (RadioReference.com) in the late 90's that consolidated frequency information for all the…
> including using SDRs to vacuum up wide swaths of RF and then store call data Been there, done that. The technique is scary-good, even with cheap hardware. Capture everything, sort by talkgroups, form listen queues ("police", "fire", "police NOT university",) prioritize, and place recordings in queues. Stream queues through ice cast. Drop low-pri messages if you fall too far behind real-time. Speaking of: if anyone…
Hi there! I'm the owner and operator of Broadcastify, which is the platform that powers all the apps that provide police scanners and public safety communications online. I'm an active HN reader and would be glad to answer any questions folks have. It's an interesting business to be in these days...
Thank you for you this!
For the last couple of years, I play Broadcastify combined with one of those downbeat live channels in YouTube while I code.
This after I tired of http://youarelistening.to/
Do you have a sense of how many precincts are encrypting their scanner comms these days?
Not OP, but: many common voice encryption implementations have serious usability issues which lead to users inadvertently -- or often even intentionally -- disabling encryption https://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/p25sec0810...