tp49 said:
Some states and municipalities do limit or restrict the use of radio scanners. Sec. 397 of the New York State Vehicle and Traffic Law strictly prohibits scanners from motor vehicles unless you have the permission of the governing body of the municipality you are in unless you are licensed by the FCC to use such equipment. For brevity I am leaving the statute's text out but could post it if necessary.
TP49,
While I haven't gone looking for the actual statute that you mention, two different people with Ham licenses have assured me that the NY law is somewhat narrow in its focus. They have indicated to me that it’s only illegal to be eavesdropping on Fire and Police bands while in your car, unless you have a hack license or some special exemption. So in theory I could use my scanner to listen in on the trains while in the car, provided that I have no police or fire frequencies entered in my scanner. I suppose that it could still lead to some interesting discussions trying to convince a police officer that I wasn’t scanning their bands.
Even worse in my case here in NY, I couldn’t prove that I don’t have a police band in my scanner. I’ve got all 96 of the AAR frequencies programmed into my scanner. The NYC Transit police used to be part of the MTA and therefore used an AAR frequency. When they were merged into the NYPD several years ago, it seems that the NYPD kept using that frequency. So if I scan all 96 AAR freqs, I can pick up police broadcasts on at least 2 of the AAR frequencies.