The idea of plaintext radio traffic being illegal to listen to -- still true, by the way -- is bizarre to me. You wouldn't yell secret information out of the window and then complain that someone heard you.

It would be amazing to go back to the 80's with a modern waterfall spectrum scope receiver, it would have been a smorgasbord eavesdropping goodness.

Here in the US you can listen to anything not encrypted, but you're not supposed to talk about it, or use that information in the commission of a crime.

My brother was into scanning in the 80s/90s. By accident he picked up the cellphone conversation of Eddy Shah who owned the (then) new national newspaper called 'Today' and one of his managers. He was discussing how to deal with a threat of strike action by the print Union!

Locating your channel was a happy accident. It's solid content. Thanks for making the effort to put it out there.

Unless I am mistaken, in the USA it is legal to receive and listen to any frequency. It is up to the transmitter to properly encode their transmission if they wish any form of privacy. You *MAY* get in trouble for decoding encrypted signals, that I do not know, but it is perfectly legal to sit there and receive whatever static they are transmitting. No transmission of any worth should be sent in the clear, anyway.

I used to work for BT and dare not say too much, but never use a land line except wishing someone happy birthday!

I slept very little in the 80s and 90s due to that magic box of tricks the "realistic scanner" from tandy and had to be pulled away from the scanner to go to the pub on fridays!...and then I wouldn't go on to a club as I wanted to get back home to catch all the.... police.....cordless phone...cellphone....baby alarm action.....arguments, love affairs' divorces, and drug deals, even ladies of the night being ordered over the phone like it was burger joint......and that quite respectable neighbour a few doors down who was so sweet... my jaw hit the floor one night ....even my my mum supposedly asleep in the next room shouted out to me "turn that up I missed that bit"! those were days .....Great article Lewis well done x

The transmissions from Euston Tower at Warren Street were many, and some were at considerable power, so much so that 2nd & 3rd harmonics would interfere with other licensed transmissions. At the time I worked for an organisation that had a number of licensed frequencies for national use, and a couple of these suffered interference in the London area. As we were well equipped with test equipment we were able to triangulate the source to Euston Tower and duly advised the DTI at Baldock that we would like the interference identified and 'sorted'. About an hour later we got a call along the lines of "It will be fixed in two days, you did not hear anything, and we will deny the issues ever existed." One of the transmissions was pulsed (apparently no normal modulation) - we estimated it was being broadcast at around 5 kW given the signal strengths we recorded some distance away - what it did 'we do not know'. Another Euston Tower story, told to me by an aerial rigger, is that they would get a job card to install an antenna at'top Euston Tower. They would attend site, a security guard would hand over the antenna and a sheet of paper instructing which pole to mount it on, it's height and direction AND which hole in the lift/equipment room wall to pass the feeder cable through to a waiting hand. That is all they ever knew.

Just checked my 3rd edition of the scanning directory. Page 107, Remmington Minicabs 142.5000. Quality !

I don’t know how you dig these stories up, but keep ‘em coming! 😃👍

If I leave an open access point on my network called 'usage forbidden' then I better have a huge dhcp pool for all the violators...

The 80's and 90's were a golden age for scanning. My AOR 1000 covered 100khz to 1ghz with no gaps. Spent hours listening to emergency services and loads of other things on VHF and UHF. It was also the advent of analogue cell phones which made for interesting listening, I always kept everything to myself. They were a bit naïve in discussing it and, although there were many detailed frequency lists available, it was best not to tell too many people what you were doing.

Another great video Lewis. I remember spotting ‘Rimington Mini Cabs’ in an early edition of the scanning directory and soon realised what it actually was!

I've been in the Baldock base it was very strange. The gate opened on its own and I was left to wander around trying to find people. Eventually someone literally appeared from underground to sign my ticket! In one room was a long line of monitors with all sorts of foreign TV stations all being recorded. No people though!

I didn't realize the scope of how restrictive the radio world is in England.

This was when the erosion of our freedoms actually started, when the government started to have utter contempt for the common people. Amazingly, ordinary people kept voting for such governments and they still do.

The fact that all of this sensitive information wasn't encrypted, masked or even coded, and just waiting to be listened to... it blows my mind. If you're a covert gov unit, you can't just rely on a law saying 'you can't listen to this specific information even though you heard it without too much trouble'

Super interesting and well presented - first time here for me. Staying forever. Dude is clear on concise raising awareness.

Interesting photos of the Redoubt and the Old Admiralty Building you've got there - I can neither confirm nor deny whether you can see my office window in those shots ;)

they broke the 1st rule of scanner club... they talked about it, or more specific what they received 🙂

Another great video, Lewis. I've got one of those R&S receivers here in my shack (actually it's the EB150 with fewer interfaces round the back) and it's a cracker!

Your amount of research is amazing!

Been a US ham for 50 years, I started at around 14 years old. This is a great site with plenty of info. I am sorry the UK is so controlling. If the folks in the US don't get their ducks in a row we will be next. So far we are still trying to figure out what a woman is ... well they are,,,,, I have known for 64 years. Some here learn VERY slowly. Thanks again for this channel, I joined.

So glad I live in the US, we listen to what we want and talk about it freely

Another great, well researched and interesting topic! Rimington Taxis, brilliant!

Great Video Lewis 90,s was a Blast for scanning and Pirate Radio Glad to be alive then👍

The Enigma2000 Group do a lot of, outside the Licence frequencies, monitoring of radio communications. Their work involves the monitoring and searching of "clandestine" transmissions. They issue a monthly log of all their findings, and lets say, they are a very useful service to our Secret Services, hence tolerated and have been so for over 40 years now. Enigma2000 has members throughout the world, and not just here in the UK.

Fascinating content, thanks for sharing this knowledge!

Your commentary always is always interesting. Oh, the good old days. I can remember hearing I believe a Radar transmitter on my FM radio also various services that were on just a domestic radio. I loved your mention of false security as if the various embassy's around the country were not doing the same.

Great video Lewis, again !

wow incredible detail. keep up the good work.

Excellent stuff!

The Rimington Minicabs listing reminds me of a tactic I've seen used in the US, where different frequency list authors will include false and unique info in their lists to see if someone else will just blindly copy the inaccurate or misleading info and republish it as their own.

i remember back in the 80s using a hi powered CB radio this bled onto the police radio network.i cant remember how i found out but i remember broadcasting inane chatter such as "hello ron, yah yah head ing on over now be 20 minutes ,,,wait for me blah blah " and then hearing the fallout at police hq on my scanner,they defo had someone tracking me down but id pop up randomly days later sometimes left the key open for an hour . i only did it for a few months

Bizarrely back in the 90s I had a set of PC speakers that picked up police band transmissions whenever they were near the house. I wasn't intentionally listening in, my pc speakers would suddenly start talking!

Your reports are never dull. And another reminder of freedoms we still have in the States that you guys don't (presuming one can afford it). As I've said before, over here we can listen to damn near anything so long as the information heard is not divulged or used for commercial purposes, i.e. Ambulance, Tow, and Taxi service jumping calls. Or in the furtherance of crimes. In my county we used to be able to listen to EVERYTHING, analog, unencrypted. Now you can't even listen to Fire tone out dispatch... unless you have a scanner/receiver that covers 700-890mhz P-25 and Motorola LTR trunking, WITH decrypt. Where I live, You can still hear land operations of Mosquito Control, Hospital, Dog Catcher, and surprisingly the JAIL. In the New Orleans area you can still monitor a few University Police Depts, the Zoo, Security for most hotels, a few museums, and the Lake Ponchartrain Causeway Police (at one time the world's longest bridge at 24 miles) It is amusing to listen to the pursuit of toll runners - they catch about half. $5 one way for a regular car, to $35 for a heavy 18 wheeler. UHF AM MilAir is listenable IF you have the proper receiver. It just depends on where in the States you are. In some areas you can still hear police and fire, analog unencrypted on VHF and UHF. After 9/11 the Government was giving away free money for everyone who was public safety to upgrade to P-25. Some departments used the cash for cars, guns, and badges 😶

In the late 1970s the Sheriff department in my area started encrypting their radios during drug raids. I had a descrambler and would listen in to them.

I remember my father tuning into the police radios transmittions on his pye music center in the late 70s to listen to the radio chatter.

I like the idea that Steller Remington was running a side business of miny cabs. Excellent production as always.

Encrypted signals are still useful to track, specially if you have a directional antenna. Just the fact that someone is using encrypted communication in your vicinity could be all you need to know.

1987 there were at least 1 very cool. Very expensive ICOM scanner and a Japanese model that I didn't know existed until a few years ago when I saw it on auction for $500 which was way overpriced being that it was only an analog scanner Back in 87 there were some direct entry keypad scanners but most of them were very limited in they got 25 to 54 MHz 136 to 174 MHz and 420 to 480 megahertz But the icom that I saw covered from 100 khz to 1 ghz And it did all mode and I think it had five decimal places and it could do very fine tuning So 869.9875 was no problem for it to receive but it could also do even stranger frequencies that government agencies used like 330.00907 Where I lived there were several military bases and facilities and I had a list of frequencies that supposedly they used but they were in the middle of the normal spacing of channels and I had no way to get onto those frequencies until someone showed me this icom and we set one night and had it sitting on one of the frequencies and sure enough it was being used by the military facility To think about how easy it is nowadays for anybody to get onto any frequency compared to what we had to work with back in the 80s people don't know how good they've got it

gosh.. as an 8 year old kid I used to slowly scan through radio waves to find stuff.., on all frequencies... weird stuff . but nothing that ever made sense..I was lookling for aliens LOL

I hate things that are illegal only because the government decides they're illegal. Whenever a "victim" of a crime can't be found, people should seriously consider not classifying the activity as a crime. Thanks for another interesting video.

Another class video Lewis.

Another well researched and interesting video, Lewis.

"Containers of illegal CB radios being shipped from Ireland" That is something I can't get my head around. Hilarious. Considering what could have been smuggled, I don't feel too threatened by a load of radios.😊

Cracking video Lewis - those were the days!

Nice shot of the Admiralty Citadel, would like to hear more about what’s coming in and out of there.

I did hear some strange stuff in the 80s playing with a TV tuner module feeding the IF out into the back of a manual tune satellite receiver.

Ahh the good old EB200, made redundant by the filed fox and the PR100 (now thats a nice bit of kit 🙂)

Someone doesn't want their department axed.

GEE I wonder how much difference there was between the price of that ONE surveillance and raid operation and the scrambling/de-scrambling equipment instead.

Thanks Lewis

Still have my old scanner somewhere not a lot on there now just digital noise

Nice one Lewis mate, "over n out"

When I lived in the UK me and my friend just used AES encrypted P25 to talk about juicy stuff.

The UK Scanning directory was just like a phonebook, sadly the police and other types went digital. Mobile phone conversations were great fun to listen to.

Haha Rimington Minicabs. Love it!

I love your video so much

Back in Australia in the 70's there was a similar mindset of the PMG , called the Pigs Meat and Gravey. or the Post Master Generals office who had almost identical crazy ideas of security of radio transmissions going back to the beginning of radio reception regulations. To this day, you can find these rules that prohibit passing on radio communications that you receive. The problem is anyone can go to the local rubbish dump, and turn it into a receiver . Now with Software defined Radio, you can get these USB sticks to do amazing feats that previously cost a fortune.

Crazy 80-108mhz is brodcast for music etc. So that means you can hear it with a standard radio!

Im in canada. Its perfectly legal to listen to any radio transmissions. Decryption of encrypted messages is illegal, but lots of police use unencrypted systems

Good work Lewis

Surprised that the guy didn't just label the frequency as, "Universal Exports". 😉

Hi its Peter I have been meaning to tell you this but I am Really Happy our roads crossed, I have learned quiet a Lot from you, you certainly Know Your Stuff, I was wondering could you give me any knowledge on a British Army Radio called the Motorola SABRE, The RACAL COUGAR, AND THE P.T.R. 349 Delta and the P.R.C. 349, THE PRC 88 and what would you advise me to buy suppose it was you buying this which one would you buy a transceiver which you can tune with a dial or even an automatic scan function transceiver like a big scanner which has no gaps in it I used to see that a lot in old adds for scanners NO GAPS could you explain this to me please and i liked the way you sent me the last correspondence we had by e-mail more secure if you wouldn't mind we could have a long chat I have a bunch of Questions I would like to ask if you have the time??? Thanks Again Peter

👏👏👍 nice video!

As someone in the US it blows my mind to be illegal to listen. I've always been told listening here is ok. It's what you do with the info. Example you can't use your neighbors phone call to go rob them when they plan to be away. Or to interfere with investigations or to evade officials

Rimmington mini cabs, a Stella example of hiding in plain sight.

I've never had a scanner but I have occasionally listened in to my local police radio using nothing more than my AM/FM radio. This was some 30 years ago. I never knew such a community existed.

As an American I find this totally nuts that you have these restrictions on scanning/listening. Lol that said we have plenty of our own insane laws I guess.

I did some work in Huston Tower over 20 years ago. The was a bad leak from a plant room which was over the Tax office. They were panicking trying to figure out how to stop it and one older guy said "it could destroy all the tax records" our guys laughed as they wouldn't have had any problem with that. Our guys went down and got onto the Plant room floor to find MOD signage KEEP OUT... the tax guy was freaking out so they busted the lock on the chain link gate and tried to plug the leak (cooling pump case had cracked wide open, lots of water) within 3 minute our guys were stopped by SO19 (Metropolitan Police Armed Response) with guns drawn.... best part, one of our guys (Phil) from Northern Ireland with a strong accent. Our foreman, who along with everyone else had hands in the air looked at Phil and said "do not say a f-ing word, you get us all shot" it took some explanation and the tax guy was still loosing his mind. Always wondered what that room was but remember saying at the time, all the stuff on the roof... Jame bond sh1t!

heck I remember when I was a kid we had a scanner and could hear the neighbors talking on there wireless phones LOL. oh and it didn't help me much because when we got in trouble and the police got involved my dad would hear it on the police band and I would get in trouble while my friends went home with there parents none the wiser. oh and later on when in my teenage years I set up a base station in the basement with I think antron 99 on the roof and a blue thunder linear and you could hear my broadcast resonate through the neighbor's aluminum gutters LOL boy those where the days. thanks for the videos .... over-and-out

I think I actually knew the London 5. They were friends of the late Bob T, who was known on LBC and BBC doing tech talk as a contributor. They also got busted for running an LW radio station. Bob had his license suspended but I can't for the life of me remember what his call was. But he was instrumental in getting me involved in radio and gave me my first 2m transciever, an FT208. Happy days.

I still find it crazy, but interesting how crazy the British government is about their own citizens listening in on government operations and charging citizens for a crime when it was the governments own fault for not encrypting the transmissions in the first place. Here in the US if you hear something that you're not supposed to hear and the government finds out, they send some suits to your door and let you know that what you heard was classified information and part of national security. They tell you we know we can't tell you not to talk about it, but we strongly urge that you don't because it could get people killed or ruin any operation that communication was a part of. It's kind of nice living in a country where the government is of the people and for the people. Kind of sucks that you have your own government spying on you. Now granted I do understand we have the NSA here in the United States that spies on everyone in the world even our own citizens, but there is nothing the NSA can do with the information they collect on the citizens here in the United States because then they'd have to admit that they're spying on us. They can't admit that they're spying on us because it's illegal.

The capital radio building reference reminded me of the late 1970s when a punk band, think it was the Clash, had one of their record sleeves that had a photo of the Capital Radio building withdrawn (the single went out but without the offending sleeve). This seemed odd as usual reasons for banning record covers at the time was on grounds of obscenity. Indeed if you had one of the EPs with the original sleeve, bought before they were withdrawn, it was something of a rarity and somewhat collectible. In the absence of any official explanation The rumour was that the sleeve contravened the official secrets as the Capital Radio building also housed a secret government facility. I thought this somewhat dubious at the time but this video makes me think that the rumour was true.

Back then when spending some time in a Million Pound radio laboratory we listened to all kinds of sh... That was real fun 😁

FCC regs on receiving RF signals in the US have remained mostly the wild west - open, free. They don't want you creating interference to any signal or device, though. They don't really have the funding to enforce much in the way of a perceived infraction. Used to be: it took a complaint. Or HAM radio operators would visit you and help you iron out your radio interference issues before anyone knew to complain. SDR hobby allows for 800MHz - 900MHz monitoring - in spite of an archaic law on the books that could effect only scanners, receivers sold in the US.

Really enjoying your videos. Thanks, 73 N7WSQ

So the 'Soviet Russians' most probably listened in from a 'fishing trawler', but ordinary citizens were not permitted to do so 😂

Is this a re-release? I feel like I've seen this video before.

Here's the catch. Long ago the SCOTUS (Supreme Court of the United States) ruled _listening_ to transmitted radio waves is not illegal provided the listener does not record, retransmit or decode for the purpose of evading any subscription fees. US military personnel, specifically communication specialists, could listen and sometimes decode while in UK but not be prosecuted.

I am currently receiving all frequencies of the electromagnetic spectrum, being that I am essentially a conductive bag of saltwater. I am not plucking the modulations out of their carrier waves, but I am, as I say, receiving all. Is this illegal, and how is the law written?

Making it illegal to listen is truly laughable. Like making it illegal to look at a squad car. ("Are you looking at me? Oh and now you're listening to me? Smelling me too, eh? That's it. We're heading down to the station. And now you've made me touch you. You sir are in violation of the Sensory Exception Act. STOP LOOKING AT ME! CLOSE THOSE EYES AND STOP LISTENING RIGHT NOW!")

I picked up a pilot calling a 09090999 before cutting off. Do you or anyone know what this number code means ? Thanks ! 👍

Rimington Mini Cabs = Uber of the 80's

In the US those with a ham radio license are exempt from any scanning restrictions across the entire country.

When I was young (1960's) The GPO (later became Telecom) was absolutely ruthless about people installing their own phone extensions or doing anything at all with their phone line. They employed people to go up the street poles with meters and check for illegal extensions in houses. They too used to turn up mob handed and ransack your entire house, confiscating every single thing that ran on electricity and handing out vast fines and prison sentences for utterly trivial things. Thing is, the GPO was still in the world-war-2 mind state as well as the British Empire crush-the-peasants mind-set. Right up until the nineties, any radio offences resulted in horrific and grossly disproportionate responses by the Police and Spooks.

Interesting installation at 2:50...what do you know about it?

Why were the authorities so reluctant to just employ scrambling/encryption to their communications? Real spy's are well known for obeying the law in their host countries /sarcasm.

That is exactly why more countries use digital encrypted radios. You can never stop someone from listening. In many countries it's not illegal to receive whatever radio signals passes by you - the only sensible option is encryption. I listened a lot to police radios years ago. Now they're digitally encrypted and no one has cracked the system yet. And I believe it's a simple firmware update if they should be cracked but on top of that I believe it's made such that only specific devices you want to receive messages can decrypt it - so no global encryption key.

AOR was the nuts back in the day

The EB200 receiver you posted a picture of didn't exist in 1987 I hadn't even joined then and we only got EB200's a few years before I left.

Oi, ya got loiscence fur dat scanna?

Absolute madness.

Is it usual to pronounce frequencies as "seventy-three decimal six five"? I've just done an aviation radio course which was explicit that digits should be pronouced separately i.e. "seven three decimal six five". or is it just the CAA/ICAO being stricter than CB?

"Department of Trade and Industry"...sounds like a front to me.

How ridiculous that nuclear weapon movements were not encrypted or at least in code.

147.5 in United States and Canada is the amateur radio frequencies we cover from one 44.0 MHz FM upper lower Side Band am to 147.995 would be the VHF and 430 to a four yeah 450 would be the high side of amateur radio Advance up here in United States and Canada that's weird 147.5 the guy gets arrested for listening the amateur radio

Scanning in Belfast in the 80s was very interesting