ismycityencrypted.com
Binary Rogue built a nationwide police radio encryption tracker for RadioReference.com — the world’s largest radio communications database.
The Problem
Across the United States, police departments are increasingly encrypting their radio communications — cutting off public access to emergency broadcasts that journalists, researchers, and citizens have monitored for decades. The Radio Television Digital News Association has flagged this as a growing threat to press freedom and public transparency.
But there was no single place to check: is my city encrypted? The data existed — scattered across RadioReference.com’s massive database of over 224,000 frequencies and 7,100 trunked radio systems — but no one had built a tool to make it searchable at the city level.
The Build
Binary Rogue proposed the project to RadioReference and built the entire application from scratch. The tool ingests data from the RadioReference API — 26,900+ public safety agencies across all 50 states and DC — normalizes it, classifies encryption status, and makes it instantly searchable by city, county, state, or zip code.
Key Features
- Search by city, county, state, or zip code
- Interactive US map with state-level encryption rates
- Browse-by-state pages for all 50 states + DC
- 1.18M individual channel and frequency records per agency
- 60,000+ conventional channels alongside trunked systems
- Automatic county-level fallback when a city lacks its own agencies
- Client-side filtering — after page load, no data leaves the browser
The Results
The site launched and immediately gained traction in the scanner and press freedom communities.
- 2,500 visitors in the first 5 days — zero paid marketing
- Organic traffic from the US, France, Singapore, Ireland, and China
- Community feedback drove a full v2 rebuild within one week
- 2.9ms median CPU time — 100% success rate, zero errors
Why It Matters
This project is Binary Rogue in a nutshell: identify a gap, propose a solution, ship it, get feedback, rebuild it better. No committees. No six-month timeline. The v1 launched, real users tested it, and a complete v2 shipped within a week — addressing every piece of feedback.
The same approach applies whether the project is a public transparency tool or an AI automation system for your business. Ship, then iterate.
Ready to Build Something?
Binary Rogue builds systems that work at scale. Book a free strategy call and bring your idea — we’ll tell you exactly how we’d build it.