The UK has some strange leftover laws about radio communication. Recently there was a post here about their system of TV detector vans to collect license fees for public television (something most sensible countries have put into their normal taxes a long time ago). And the UK for example is also missing from Live ATC because listening to (open, unencrypted) ATC communications is illegal there.
Fyi TV detector vans are essentially fearmongering by the government. A freedom of information request recently revealed not a single prosecution has been generated from the use of those vans since the project's alleged start in the early 50s.
> "Technically possible" doesn't always mean "legally permissible."
In the UK if a radio device is 'inherently incapable of transmission', you do not
need a licence to install or use it. A scanner is very much that.
It is legal to use a scanner in the UK as long as it is clear from the context that the message being listened to was intended for general reception. There are many circumstances in aviation where this could be the case.
ATC is not meant for general reception. radio stations, weather/navigation broadcasts, amateur radio bands, etc. are intended for general reception. ATC is intended for airport staff and aircraft, so it is technically illegal to listen to it in the UK.
One easy example I can think of in the UK is uncontrolled/semi-controlled airspace (class E/G) and uncontrolled airfields. Parties transmitting on those frequencies are basically sending broadcast messages for the benefit of anyone listening in order to inform those unknown parties of their location and intentions.
See also, for example, this reply to an FOI request[1], I quote:
Whether or not an aeronautical transmission was intended for
general reception would depend on all of the circumstances of the
transmission. We cannot therefore say, generally, whether or not
listening to these transmissions would be an offence.
I love this "meant for". It seems very in line with British politeness to treat certain broadcasts you receive as things that just weren't meant for you, so let's all pretend that you didn't get them.
> It seems very in line with British politeness to treat certain broadcasts you receive as things that just weren't meant for you, so let's all pretend that you didn't get them.
That's basically how the actual law on this matter is worded, i.e. "don't listen, but if you did listen, don't tell anyone".
Section 48, Wireless Telegraphy Act[1], notice the clever little "or" at the end of (1)(a).
So 48(1) is telling you: "don't use it with intent"(1)(a), but if you do don't be that person who "discloses information"(1)(b).
We used to have a plane with a radio in designed to listen to ATC for the usual reasons. I see no great difference to listening to it for flying the plane of listening to it for no particular reason when sitting around, legally speaking.
Transmitting to ATC is of course quite a different thing.
Don’t need a license to have a TV, or a license to use it to receive many signals.
You need a license to receive a television programme service, which I believe is defined as a service being transmitted by an ofcom registered television station.
As I understand it, pager messages are the same way. At least in the US, they’re transmitted unencrypted, and anyone with a $25 SDR dongle and some free software can receive them. But it’s illegal to, say, put them up on a website.
This is *exactly* what someone in Yorkshire found out a few years ago when he wrote a bot to post Fire and Rescue pager messages to Twitter.
It's worth pointing out that it's almost impossible to get Ofcom to prosecute you for anything to do with receiving and recording radio traffic, or even transmitting illegally, as long as you're not making a nuisance of yourself.
This is generally how laws work in the UK. You can do it right up to the point at which it pisses people off enough that the legal system has to act.
Note that there is also an encrypted version of this system that's not publicly accessible. I'm not sure about the quality of the encryption used, but I do know that police traffic and ambulance traffic often goes via encrypted channels.
I'm also not sure if this is a system that's legally protected or that the government simply hasn't bothered trying to take these sites down.
That's called C2000 yes but it's mainly for voice. It can handle text messages too. It's based on Tetra. And it's two-way. Indeed very well encrypted.
P2000 is one way and based on FLEX, a paging protocol. It's indeed only used for fire and ambulance. The police data is too sensitive so they use C2000. Though you will see police traffic related to accidents etc.
But no P2000 isn't protected and the government even used that website themselves :) Not officially though, I guess.
I think this is also because most fire departments use a lot of volunteers which makes their activities a lot more public.
I set up the SDR dongle and app on my laptop and played around with it for a few hours. It was pretty interesting to see just how many pagers still seem to be in use. A lot of it seemed to be alerts from sensors of various types - refrigeration and things like that. But the majority looked to be from hospitals. Including what seemed to be patient data.
All the retained and volunteer fire stations around the UK use pagers, because they're simple, reliable, and moderately firefighter-resistant - and about 70 quid to replace when they get smashed, deep-sixed, melted, driven over by the pump, or chewed by a dog. Yes, this week alone.
They're used for alerting rather than paging, in that the message is four flashing LEDs and a lot of beeping rather than a description of the incident, and as such the paging transmitters just transmit a unique number rather than a message. The message is always "get to the fire station right now".
I listen to a a few ATC YouTube channels like VASAviation[1], Mentour Pilot[2], 74 Gear[3]. Are you say that if VAS, etc. put up a video of UK ATC traffic, while in the UK, they could be punished for that? Are we talking some 5 pound fine, or is that something closer to an arrestable offense? My assumption is it falls under some vague "safety and security" measure in response to 9/11, but that would raise questions about just having it encrypted, instead.
Honestly, the concept of this being illegal is shocking to me. I had assumed recording/playback of ATC comms was essentially a universal standard practice (minus Military, police ops, etc.) to help with education and training. It seems like a terrible shame that the UK would have such a strange rule barring it.
> put up a video of UK ATC traffic, while in the UK, they could be punished for that?
Yes
> are we talking some 5 pound fine, or is that something closer to an arrestable offense?
In the UK criminal offences are generally dealt with reasonably softly, i.e. within the context of the criminal and the severity of the crime.
With something like this, which would be a criminal offence similar to re-distributing paid TV services you would normally just go through various levels of fine depending on severity/scale.
So a website explicitly setup to distribute recordings could expect quite a heavy fine because (a) they were knowingly doing it, and (b) they were distributing to a large global audience.
Chances of being arrested on this sort of offence in the UK is highly unlikely. Maybe if you were a repeat offender you might leave them with little choice, but that's probably the only scenario.
They certainly built some, but it does seem more like a publicity stunt or occasionally touring enforcement option, than any kind of seriously pursued plan.
It's funny because we have labelled "TV Inspektion" vans all over the place -- but those are for robotic camera examination of a stuck sewer line!
(After many years of public broadcasting being charged if you have a TV -- or even a PC or mobile phone with TV capability -- the charges now go through the normal tax system, so you no longer have to worry about the real TV inspection people asking to come in to see if you have a TV!).
Actually in the 80s this was not technically impossible.
Superheterodyne receivers including the ones in TVs have a local oscillator that's mixed with the received signal. This oscillator leaks out a bit and can be detected at short ranges.
These days there's much more interference and TV is not distributed over the air anymore usually. So it is no longer a thing.
The thing is though, it's usually not needed. All they have to do is go to the houses without a license and either look through the window or listen for the sounds of a TV show.
I wish they'd just abandon the concept of a TV License though. Everyone has a media capable device these days and the administrative load of all this license crap is not worth the savings for the 5 people that really don't have a TV. In other words, just take it out of the taxes.
In the Netherlands they have done this for decades but when I lived in Ireland there was still a really expensive license. For which you get 2 really mediocre channels (IMHO)
The funny thing was the ads on TV. They focused not so much on the huge fine of more than a thousand euros but on the shame of being seen in court without a license. As if anyone gives a F... Lol. Piracy was really rampant when I was there and people even networked their wifis together over long distances to share movies.
You could just about make a speculative case for IF and flyback transmission in the old analogue days, although triangulation would have been a serious problem.
Today's digital systems are much quieter.
But the best argument is that even if they worked it wouldn't make a difference. A large team of inspectors has a list of properties without a license and they're checked in person. A complex detector van does nothing to make this easier - as proven by the complete lack of detector evidence in court cases.
“ Modern efforts to detect licence evasion are shrouded in mystery. Modern flatscreen displays receiving digital television signals do not emit as much radio frequency interference as older designs, and any such signals detected are less easily correlated with broadcast television. An LCD television in the home can just as easily be displaying output from a video game console or an online streaming service, with both being usage cases that do not require the owner to pay a licence fee. Based on an alleged BBC submission for a search warrant in recent years, there may be optical methods used in which reflected light from a television in a viewer’s home is compared to a live broadcast signal. The BBC declined to answer the Freedom of Information request with any details of their methods, other than to say they have employed vehicles and handheld devices in enforcement efforts.”
There's no mystery. They have a list of every address without a TV license so simply go and ring the doorbell and ask you. You don't have to let them in.
An ex-gf of mine was caught red-handed with the TV on and brazenly (and impressively) bluffed her way out of a conviction. She said it wasn't her flat and the real owner was out.
The inspectors can't do much if you refuse to identify or incriminate yourself.
Those detector vans were a hoax. I don’t have a TV licence because I don’t fit any of the criteria for requiring one. Screw taking it out of my tax instead.
Germany solved that issue by making owning any device capable of receiving internet broadcasts part of the eligibility criteria. By that point they could just as well make it part of general tax budgets...
Germany just sends a bill to every registered resident, no matter what.
The Rundfunkbeitrag is applied per household, not based on devices, and it's up to each person to either pay the tax or justify to the Beitragsservice that they don't need to.
And of course young people are also less likely to watch TV in the first place. It's basically subsidized entertainment for the elderly, which would be fine if the funds were sourced equitably. I also don't buy that this weird totally-not-a-tax setup makes the news any more independent from the government - after all, it's still the government deciding to uphold or even increase the fees as well as allowing and supporting the enforcement.
Yeah, it's a pretty shitty system and I wish we would get rid of it. Don't have high hopes of that happening anytime soon though.
Some countries have a very interesting way to frame the requirements: "any device through which you can listen/view broadcasts produced by the national radio/television". When they stream national video/radio online it automatically qualifies every computer or smartphone or car radio as a device that makes you required to pay the tv fee
Actually they were a thing, briefly, but technology rendered them obsolete as quickly as they appeared (better shielding to avoid interference etc) - but they remained a deterrent for quite a while
