Many years ago a mate of mine had a scanner which enabled you to listen to all sorts of things including police and fire services etc. I know it all went digital some time back, my question is, is there a digital scanner which enables you to do the same thing??

Cheers

I don't think there is because its probably encrypted nowadays - with it being digital, the encryption can be much much harder to break than old and basic analog encryption technologies.

What I am surprised at is that nobody seems to have brought out a tetra/airwave detector - all the police have them and they transmit a digital signal nearly permanently. Should be able to detect a police presence up to quarter of a mile away with some very cheap kit.

Tetra is uncrackable even if you had a way of getting the keys to unlock the code the base station would know and shut the signal down.
You can buy tetra recievers but without the keys they are useless but saying that with a normal scanner you can still listen to interesting conversations like shop/pub watch:-)