I swear there used to be a law on the books that specifically said this, and it included police radio as they use the RF spectrum owned by the People. Police radio would be unencrypted and it would just contain the day-to-day traffic, and anything sensitive they’d transmit via other means like Nextel or even before that, the police phone booths.

IIRC it was one of those “check and balance” things to keep police honest. Although I haven’t been able to find any law stating this, so perhaps I am mis-remembering some other law.

As for encryption in practice, cellular is encrypted, as others mentioned WiFi is encrypted, satellite communications are encrypted, a whole bunch of radio traffic is encrypted.

To counter @[email protected] , no, all transmissions should not be encrypted. The lack of openness and transparency by creating closed systems means there’s no more “watching the watchers” and we have to take organizations in power at their word. Most human communication dating back centuries was not encrypted, and humanity got along just fine.

Likewise, when we assume our communications are “secure” we all are much more willing to share things over networks that we probably shouldn’t. It makes security on the human side inherently lazy. Think about all the things people probably share over iMessage that they shouldn’t. Apple has the keys to every conversation. A bad actor could gain access to a whole bunch of peoples’ personal data they just assume is safe.

There are places where encryption should be used, but it should be used thoughtfully, not just, “lock it all down.” It creates a dangerous complacency factor.

It is a very gray area topic that does not have one universal answer.

Edit: Formatting.