Two warnings in advance...
1) IN no way is this to suggest jamming any signals of a program.. that puts the detainees at risk if they need medical attention.
2) In no way is this to suggest pretending to be a supervisor to give bogus orders... ala JRC in which some poor kid got repeatedly zapped due to a sick practical joke.
Neither of the above should be happening.. just don't... it puts the detainees at risk of injury or worst if they need medical care but the goon in charge can't use their radio due to someone being a peckerwood..
That being said...
Civilian radio frequencies are not encrypted. I won't go into the gory details of radio band allocation because I'm not entirely caught up to speed on it myself. I just started studying for my ham radio license and I still can't tell a transistor from my elbow.
None the less.. many programs do use radios to communicate between each other and these radios are easily listened to by a comparable model of radio of a 50 dollar radio shack scanner bought off ebay.
No need to get kinky and drop 500 bucks on a APCO 25 capable police band scanner as programs are very much going to reside within the capabilities of a reliable analog scanner. If you want to sniff around the local police bands.. do some google work and you'll surely find any number of websites that will tell you if your local 5-0 uses digital radios or analog. If it's analog, which is stil quite common due to expense, congrats.. your 50 dollar radio shack special can hear the fuzz getting ready for a donut run.
Now.. Here is where my logic gets a little twisted...
I'd love to sniff out the frequencies of a program.. record their radio traffic for two things..
One I'd like to see if they are on the frequencies that require a license.. if they are.. I'd report them to the FCC just to see if they have a license or not. I'm not talking about a ham radio license but an FCC license to use walkie talkie radio that is tuned to the frequencies reserved for businesses and others who pay their license fee to use those frequencies.
There is a bit of a fine involved, not a huge one, but it would amuse me to no end.
Now the other one.. and this is where I'm unsure how to proceed..
If they are chatting back and forth over the airwaves using Detainee names.. I wonder if that would be a violation of the HIPPA laws?
Thoughts on this Zen? I know you know more about HIPPA than I ever will.