Police Scanner Laws in Georgia (2026): Is It Legal?

The law in Georgia

Georgia does have a scanner-adjacent statute, and it points the other way. O.C.G.A. § 35-1-5 makes it a misdemeanor to use the same wavelength as the radio system adopted by the Department of Public Safety, or by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, without prior written authorization from the commissioner or director — and to do any act interfering with the proper receipt or transmission of that traffic. The prohibition is written around using the frequency and interfering with transmissions; it says nothing about owning a receiver or listening to unencrypted traffic. No Georgia statute restricts scanner ownership, home use, or use in a vehicle.

Enforcement reality

The statute on the books targets transmitting and interfering, not listening, so it gives a scanner owner nothing to worry about. No Georgia prosecution of a listener is on record.

What you can monitor in Georgia

With a police scanner in Georgia, you can legally listen to any unencrypted public safety channel, including:

• Fire department dispatch and operations
• EMS and ambulance communications
• NOAA weather alerts and emergency broadcasts
• Unencrypted police channels (where available)

In practice, of the 440 talkgroups catalogued across Georgia in our database, 264 are recorded as being in the clear and 163 as encrypted.

The radio systems most often recorded in Georgia are Newton County P25 (GA), Georgia FleetTalk (NXDN), Gwinnett County Public Safety (GA), Henry County (P25), Oconee Areawide Radio System (OARS), Tift County Public Safety P25.

Before buying a scanner, check whether your local agencies in Georgia have encrypted their communications. If they have, your scanner won't be able to receive their transmissions regardless of legal status.

What's already encrypted in Georgia

Scanner use being legal in Georgia does not mean everything is listenable. Our database currently tracks 127 agencies in Georgia that encrypt at least some radio traffic, across 34 counties. Of those, 98 encrypt all monitored channels rather than only a few.

The encryption most commonly recorded in Georgia is P25 ADP (58 agencies), P25 AES-256 (42 agencies), and Unknown (8 agencies).

32 of these 127 records have been verified against RadioReference system data; the remainder are unverified and may be out of date. Encryption status changes without notice — confirm the current status of any specific agency on RadioReference before relying on it.

Frequently asked questions