Two-Way Radio Spying

My school uses Mag One BPR40 walkie talkies. i think they are UHF. If I wanted to listen in, would i buy the same model, or should i buy a different walkie talkie? I might need to search through frequencies. would the scan function work for that, or would a walkie talkie with a number pad be better because i can just put in the frequencies from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_band ?

If you don't care about quality, you definitely want a Baofeng.

>>13506 and what should I get if I DO care about quality?

>>13507 Something that costs five times as much.

>>13508 Could you give an example of where my $250 should go?

>>13523 You could use the sdr approach instead. A good way to start is to play around with some cheap RTL2832U dongles and gnuradio. They work surprisingly well for the price once you ditch the antenna it comes with it and replace it with a simple half-wave dipole (it's really easy to build one yourself). Once you get the hang of it you can invest in more robust and better quality hardware like an Hackrf One (https://greatscottgadgets.com/hackrf/). There are tonnes of information about RTLSDR online, but a good place to start would be the rtlsdr wiki (http://rtlsdr.org/) or https://www.rtl-sdr.com/ Good luck!

>>13506 Am I able to order a baofeng from amazon seeing as im in the US and the FCC derezzed chinese radios that have access to non-amature frequencies?

>>13506 Dude baofeng is the soykaf. I love it.

>>13503 if you buy the same model, you can probably listen in unless thy use "privacy codes" which are a form of audio filtering >Often called continuous tone-coded squelch system (CTCSS) or digital-coded squelch (DCS) encoding, this is actually a type of filtering system. >The speaker of your walkie-talkie will only activate when it receives a transmission from another walkie-talkie that precedes its message with a specific tone combination. But it should be remembered that the communicating parties of two or more must use the same privacy codes in order to work with each other. depending on the frequency they transmit at (25 channel land walkie talkies do not seem to have a particular channel scheme) you may be able to modify a baofeng to receive their transmissions. otherwise you may need more expensive tools, unless you can use a USB dongle ($25) to intercept radio transmissions

>>13586 baoofengs are legal and you can listen/tinker all you want, the problem is transmitting without a license is radio piracy

>>13807 Isn't it just the frequency though? AFAIK the baofengs can be tuned to almost whatever frequency you want and in the US there are three sets of freqencirys anybody can talk on all they want without permission from government: * CB or Citizen Band: Used by truckers, hunters, lots of field workers in land areas. * VHF or Marine Radio: Used by boats, ships and dock workers and harbor masters of all kinds. * The third one I don't know the name of, but if you go to any camping store and buy and set of consumer grade walkie talkies, this is what they use. It's not the CB frequencies, but something else. There's like 13 "channels" or something and anyone can buy these cheap soykafty radios and talk on them all they want. You can even find toy ones for kids at toy stores. Why can't one person just buy a baofeng and then tune it to talk on any of these frequencies?

>>13806 I seriously doubt OP's school uses anything like that.

>>13810 You can build a radio that transmits noise in almost any frequency you want pretty easily. I doubt you'll get away with it for long.

>>13810 >Why can't one person just buy a baofeng and then tune it to talk on any of these frequencies? if the person knows what he is doing, it would not be too hard. the problem is figuring out which frequency is being used and then configuring appropriately. Some commercial radios have different channels on the same frequency >brand a channel 2 = brand b channel 13 this is not the case with maritime radio (16 for international hailing and distress etc.) but for commercial radios, they just use whatever part of the legal spectrum they can, thus unless you can figure out what frequency "channel 8" is, you will have a hard time finding transmissions without getting good at scanning

>>13814 >how to prevent drones from spying on you the post

>>13506 baofeng are unbeatable in terms of price and quality. they are tough as fuarrrk and reliable. they are treated as a chinkmeme, but they really deliver.

>>13810 Because different type of radios (transceivers) have different specs and fall under different laws. In my country, you aren't allowed to use a ham radio to transmit on CB frequencies, for example. And CB transceivers and antennas have more strict limitations than ham radios. If you want to transmit, get a ham radio license (you *could* get a CB license but ham radio license is better, IMHO: You get access to wider spectrum and ham radio allows you to do more interesting stuff than CB, IMO. But CB can be better choice if you just want to have banter with friends or something). Check the local laws because in some countries you don't need a license for CB, I think. Getting a ham radio license isn't very hard and you will gain the essential knowledge while you are studying for the exam. IDK how exactly you get a ham radio license in $your_country, if you are interested, perhaps you could ask on 8chan's /hamradio/ board? >>13876 This. Do NOT fall for those chink meme radios that have high transmitting power (let's say 10 Watts), they are a scam (all they do is make more interference than lower powered handhelds. Besides the whole point of handheld radios is the portability, not the Tx Pwr. Use a repeater or other type of rig). Also, Baofeng handhelds, have really good stock antennas when compared to lot of other chink manufacturers.

How do you intercept/decrypt police scanners?

>>15024 Take a look here: http://www.radioreference.com/apps/db/ What agency/system are you referring to? Forgive me, but I've run across many instances in the past where folks confuse digital voice with "encryption" Best case scenario you need to look at using software like DSD+ with your RTl SDR dongle. If its truly encrypted voice your ability to crack the crypto is probably going to be quite an undertaking. There are some references to breaking encryption on a P25 system that I have come across. However if the agency in question changes the "keys over the air" routinely its going to be a whole lot more trouble. As far as I know there are no "stand alone" apps which can do the job for you. Most of the research I have seen regarding breaking voice crypto has been very technical and requires more than an above average understanding. (Proof of concept code is usually self censored by the researchers to protect from malicious abuse) I'm not saying "give up, its not worth your time." Although you might be unsuccessful in you endeavor to listen to "encrypted" transmissions you might learn a few things along the way... One final note: In the US there may be legal ramifications to consider with breaking encrypted law enforcement traffic... but I'm no lawyer so Ill leave that aspect to someone else that thinks their google skills constitute a Bar Association certification...

>>13876 this

>>15024 Tuning into the signal should be fairly easy, most countries have laws restricting transmit on their specific frequencies. Now the real question you're asking is "how do I do cryptanalysis and cryptographic attacks". That's an entirely different and much more difficult thing. Look into the standards used, the implementations, and hope that the implementations are broken or outdated because otherwise you're just joining the race to breaking modern crypto.