It looks like as of this morning, basically the entire NTX P25 system is encrypted, or at least the majority of the dispatch channels that were open yesterday are now no longer in the clear. Frisco, The Colony, Collin County Sheriff’s Office are all encrypted. DPS tollway is the only law enforcement call I’ve heard all morning in the area.

Sad, but it is understandable… during emergent situations, officers don’t want to have to be bothered to remember to switch from the dispatch channels over to an encrypted one or to flip the crypto switch on their radio.

Of course, there’s always the people who will say this is to hide what’s happening and not to protect people. And for all I know, that may in fact be part of the motivation — I’ve heard some things that made me raise my eyebrows over the years.

And I suppose if it’s worth figuring out what it would take to start doing regular FOIA requests on daily audio… These ought to be public records, and in fact, I’d think we could get more than the dispatch channels. One side benefit is it would potentially make the city say “I wonder if it would be easier to go back to the way it was before.” 😂 But if we think the audio is of public interest, we ought to be able to hear it.