[kellishaver]

Maybe it's the fact that I spent my youth growing up around HAM radio and then did several years of EMS dispatching, but I much prefer listening to the scanner than the news. It can be chaotic at times, garbled at others, but if you're used to sorting it out, it's the best way to get accurate information.

[flexd]

There are a lot of people listening. I think perhaps the best way of learning information now is to follow the info posted in #bostonbombing on Freenode, they are live-updating what they hear on the scanners + a lot of other sources.

[mindcrime]

Former firefighter and 911 dispatcher here: I agree completely. It takes a while to get a feel for it, but if you want to know what's going on in real-time, listening to the emergency comms is the way to go.

Unfortunately, in some jurisdictions that's hard or impossible to do, as they use digital systems with trunking that made it hard to monitor with a scanner and/or use encryption.

Need I say that I think encrypting this stuff is a bad idea? Even if it may, on rare occasion, benefit a "bad guy" to listen to the police channels, weighed against the need for government transparency, I think the need to keep the comms open for everybody wins out.