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by JoshTriplett 3926 days ago
This is ancient, dating back to when cell phones didn't use encryption. As opposed to today, when many of them still use fundamentally broken encryption like A5/1 and A5/2, other than the ones doing something vaguely sensible like VoLTE. (Though I haven't heard anything about the ban on such devices being lifted.)

But in general, "you can't listen to this frequency" is completely crazy; "listen all you like but you won't get anything useful" makes more sense (along with "don't broadcast on this frequency above this power without a license").