Cross-posted to HIW.

I noticed that someone came across this blog via a Google search of "hacking police scanners".

This has become a lot more difficult since 1994 when the FCC ruled that they would no longer certify scanner receivers that were "readily modifiable" for receiving cellular phone frequencies. From the late 1980s until 1994, most scanners were capable of being modified for "full 800 MHz. reception" by clipping a diode or jumper on the circuit board, the presence of which told the scanners firmware that it was supposed to be a "US" version as opposed to an "export" version. I would hardly consider however clipping a diode to be a "hack".

These days wireless phones are moving off the 800 MHz. cellular band and use digital modulation. You're not going to hear anything on a "full coverage" police scanner other than people using old analog cellphones as surveillance devices, and other such high weirdness.

If you come across some late 1980s and early 1990s vintage police scanners that haven't been totally butchered by individuals who should have been banned from possessing a soldering iron, and wish to bugger, I mean butcher, them yourself then do yourself a favor and get all three volumes of the late Bill Cheek's Scanner Modification Handbooks:



Don't let the age of these books fool you. They are must-haves for your library.

Now the present rage in monitoring technology involves SDRs, software-defined radios. That's where the radio hacking is these days, and goes quite a ways beyond clipping a diode with a pair of wire cutters. I would suggest GNU Radio.