Is it illegal to listen to peoples cell or cordless phone conversations with a police radio?
Per the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, monitoring the cellular frequencies is illegal except for law enforcement personnel. Some scanners can be modified to do it, but the mods are illegal, as is the modified scanner. As for cordless phones, the original ones in the 27 MHz range could be listened to with any shortwave radio. The newer versions (900 MHz and higher) require a fairly new scanner radio that handles the high frequencies. And the newest ones are in bands that are above all but very expensive scanners. Beyond that, the migration to digital cordless systems will render the conversations unintelligible. IAC, most phone conversations are either offensive or crashingly boring. And it’s a violation of privacy. Don’t try to do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you.
