Yahoo Answers is shutting down on 4 May 2021 (Eastern Time) and the Yahoo Answers website is now in read-only mode. There will be no changes to other Yahoo properties or services, or your Yahoo account. You can find more information about the Yahoo Answers shutdown and how to download your data on this help page.
can someone pick up a cell phone call on a police scanner?
6 Answers
- Anonymous11 months ago
Yes they can! Scanner manufacturers purposely block out parts of the 800mhz band and part of the 900mhz bands that contain cell phone frequencies! But if you know what you are doing you can restore cellular frequencies!
- Robert JLv 711 months ago
No - or not in the sense of hearing conversations.
Since the mid 1990s, cellular phones use an encrypted and compressed digital multiplex system.
The only thing anyone may hear is a "buzz", a mix of data bursts from the cell tower and any phones on that frequency.
The very first "1G" analog mobile phones could be picked up on scanners, as they just used two separate frequencies for normal uncompressed audio either way - but that changed 25 years or so ago, with 2G / GSM cellular phones.
Those and all later ones use the digital multiplex system.
(Hold a mobile phone that's in a call, near an audio amp or active speakers on a PC and if the radio suppression on the amp/speakers is not very good you may hear a "buzz", that is the rapid steam of data transmissions being picked up; that's similar to what a scanner would hear, just a lot more from other phones a lot farther away).
- Anonymous11 months ago
Cell phone signals are digital and encrypted now. The days of analog cell phones is long gone.
- Old Man DirtLv 711 months ago
It would not do much good- the signals now are digital and I believe encoded (after a fashion). It can be done, there is a lot of information on how too.
Now one of the interesting things is this- the police do have the technology and it has been ruled they do not need to get permission to tap into the conversation like they do for a land line.