Going Dark: Police Departments Across Country Encrypt Radios, Alarming Press Freedom Groups

Law enforcement agencies across the United States are scrambling to encrypt their radio communications, prompting fury from journalists, scanner hobbyists, and the public who are locked out of real-time access to police activity. The latest to join the trend: the City of Fairfax and Loudoun County in Northern Virginia, both of which switched to encrypted radio communications in July 2026.The shift is part of a sweeping national movement. Departments in Denver, Baltimore, New York City, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Seattle have already encrypted their systems. In the National Capital Region alone, the Virginia State Police, Prince William County Police, DC Metropolitan Police, and Montgomery County, MD, police have all gone encrypted.Police officials say encryption is essential to protect the sensitive personal information — names, home addresses, dates of birth, and health details — that flows routinely over dispatch channels. A Fairfax County Police presentation put it bluntly: encryption “prevents someone’s worst day from being used for entertainment.” Modern police departments use digital trunked radio systems — typically P25 Phase II networks — that support optional voice encryption. When enabled, each transmission is scrambled using a cryptographic key, most commonly AES-256, the federal standard. Consumer scanners receive the signal but cannot decode the audio without the matching key. No app, hardware modification, or software update can break it.Free smartphone apps like Broadcastify have made police scanning universally accessible in recent years — a development law enforcement cites as a key driver of the encryption push. “Other area jurisdictions have been moving in this direction to better protect law enforcement officers as well as the identity of victims and operational information about ongoing responses that might otherwise become known to persons with criminal intent,” said Tom Julia, Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office media relations director, in a statement to Loudoun Now.Press freedom advocates aren’t buying it. Dan Shelley, president and CEO of the Radio Television Digital News Association, warned in January 2023 that “the move to encrypt police scanner communications puts the public — and the newsrooms that serve them by seeking and reporting the truth — at risk.”Justin Sasso, CEO of the Colorado Broadcasters Association, told Truthout that the consequences are already being felt. “Since broadcast journalists and newsrooms have been cut off from law enforcement radios, there are multiple incidents of communities not learning about active shooters, wildfires, and matters of public safety in a timely manner,” he said.Several states have attempted to rein in blanket encryption. Colorado passed a law in 2021 requiring encrypted agencies to draft journalist access policies — but included no enforcement mechanism. As of 2023, no Colorado department had complied. California, Illinois, and New York have introduced similar bills; none have become law.Meanwhile, each department that goes dark pledges continued transparency through press releases, body camera footage, and social media updates.

Going Dark: Police Departments Across Country Encrypt Radios, Alarming Press Freedom Groups

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