WichitaFallsComplete.com
Uninformed Cordless Phone Users
Every now and then I am reminded of how clueless many people are when it comes to the ability for the general public to monitor our day-to-day communications, especially radio communications.
I will sometimes mention to fellow correctional officers the details of some prison radio traffic I heard on my scanner on my days off. "You can listen to the Allred Unit on your scanner?"
"Well, yes" I reply.
Sometimes I'll mention something I hear going on at Wal-Mart or Atwoods, or the drive-thru at the KFC-Taco Bell down the road.
"I didn't know you could do that!" is the usual response.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, when the first generation of cordless phones were popular, no conversation was private. That generation of phones communicated in a frequency range covered by even the least expensive Radio Shack scanners. There was no such thing as cordless phone signal scrambling back then.
Plus, it was legal to monitor the base unit of any cordless phone unit, and it was the base unit that carried both sides of the conversation. These days, monitoring cordless and cell phone traffic is illegal. Cordless phones are more advanced and operate at frequencies out of the range of most scanners.
I know of many scanner enthusiasts who would cruise the neighborhoods with their mobile scanners and, when a cordless phone conversation was encountered, would pull over, park and listen in.
Did you use a cordless phone back in those days? Did anyone on your block have a scanner? If so, everything you said could have been monitored. It was wild! If you had your scanner antenna mounted high on a tower then the phone scanning world was yours for a half mile in all directions.
During the same time period, the still-new cellular phones could be monitored on any scanner that monitored in the 800 Mhz range. These analog signals were easy prey for the average scanner user. Now, with digital technology, and anti-monitoring laws, your cell phone conversations are secure. Only the most advanced hackers can break in. It's now illegal for scanners sold in the United States to even be able to tune in to the frequencies used by modern cell phones.
Then there were, and still are, the cordless baby monitors. You place the transmitter near baby's bed and the receiver in the living room or kitchen so you can keep an ear on things. As you might guess, the baby's bed was usually in the master bedroom. And, as you might guess, very few people remembered to turn off the transmitter when they went to bed. Well, you know the rest of the story. It's still legal to listen in on baby monitors!
In my home town of Wichita Falls, Texas, Wal-Mart and several public schools use the inexpensive Multiple Use Radio Service (MURS) handheld radios to conduct their business. MURS is regulated under the Citizens Band (CB) rules. It's legal to monitor them and users have no legal expectation of privacy.
The lesson for today: Be careful - someone may be listening to you.
There's still a lot of interesting stuff to listen to!
Maynard