[ChrisMarshallNY]

I used to work for a company that made “super Bearcat scanners.” These were “DC-to-light” scanners, with multiple demodulation methods (SSB, DSB, Phase, Frequency, Amplitude, etc.). They cost about 40 grand each, in the early 1980s.

Needless to say, most customers were military or TLAs.

We could listen in on mobile phone conversations without much difficulty.

Then frequency-hopping started to become en vogue, along with encryption, and made it a lot more difficult to eavesdrop. Most of that happened after I left the company.