back to article German Mickey Mouse radio snoops on cops

The German powers that be are investigating a kids' miniature Mickey Mouse radio which apparently entertains nippers with police radio traffic. The Chinese-made novelty came with issue 12 of Micky Maus magazine, which hit newsstands last week. Parents reported the eavesdropping to cops, who picked up a few copies to check out …

COMMENTS

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Dead Vulture

    Oh Common...

    Thanks too for the offer of the Icelandic two-headed sheep link

    You cant leave it like that...

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Eh?

    What? No Tetra? What's going on?

  3. Jord
    Stop

    Icelandic two-headed sheep?

    That sounds like a much better story. I want to see that....

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    I think I speak for us all when I say

    Bring forth the Icelandic two-headed sheep!

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No No No...

    Those radios were meant for the UK market.

    After all _WE'RE_ the ones with the Micky Mouse Police "Service".

  6. Dan
    Thumb Up

    Yeah, right...

    ...like I was going to be the first to mention it: Bring on the 2-headed sheep!

  7. John A Blackley

    Shurely

    ....the word 'verboten' could've been used somewhere in the story.

  8. michael

    re:I think I speak for us all when I say

    here here

  9. Sooty

    surely

    something as critical as police radio would be scrambled at the very least, although i assumed that they majority of police radios now would be digital and encrypted.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why so sheepish?

    I for one would welcome news of our Icelandic Bicephalic Ovine Overlords.

  11. Alan Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    <title>

    “The radio is exclusively designed for listening to music. Everything else is not allowed."

    Ah, so it filters out adverts, news & inane DJ chatter - let me have one now....

  12. Jim Carter
    Coat

    DAS IST VERBOTEN!!

    Yeah right, like that'll stop the kids. And that name Ulrike Sweden surely can't be real...

  13. ceedee
    Happy

    Paging Mike R

    It's time you started your own blog!

    Miss ya!

  14. Schultz

    @Sooty

    Why encrypt? This is Germany, all it takes is a rule -- problem solved.

    Verboten, about time the kids learned that one!

  15. Richard Porter
    Gates Horns

    Mickey Maus, Ulrike Sweden, ...

    Bit early for April fools innit?

  16. Bad Beaver
    Stop

    HALT!

    It's totally VERBOTEN not to have that 2-headed link. Oh and I do feel sorry for my local plods, equipped with radios so old that even kiddie toys can listen in.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    VHF

    Back in the 80's, you could pick up police signals on any ordinary VHF radio. They were actually very boring to listen to, so not many people bothered.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    WE WANT THE SHEEP!

    WE WANT THE SHEEP!

    WE WANT THE SHEEP!

    WE WANT THE SHEEP!

    WE WANT THE SHEEP!

    (No, I'm not from Wales or New Zealand, but I might be baaaaa-rking mad!)

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    Unfortunate prehistoric radios

    Germany is rolling-out a Tetra network, 10 years after the British. They were originally intended to roll-out together with the UK, but, well, they never got beyond talking about it.

    It is a bit embarrassing that criminals can listen-in to police radios with a standard scanning receiver, but i understand that the police realise this, and treat it as an insecure channel.

    Quite how they describe a bank robbery in progress without letting-on to their eavesdroppers beats me, "ze donuts haf fallen auf der box and are rollink down prinzenstrasse, in a mkII Jaguar" ?

  20. Gareth

    Bah!

    Bugger Apple devices & Phorm's nefariousness - serve us up our 2ewe dish..!

  21. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    Will somebody think of the children!

    Now kids will find out that Polizei discuss important matter like whether anyone bought a bunch of "Berliner" for today over analog radio. Shocking.

  22. Dave Jones
    Happy

    Brits can be Teutonic too

    If you read the fine print on the TV licence, it says quite clearly that you can't use it for anything else but watching permitted TV channels. But wait, there's more. It also says you are not allowed to tell anyone else if you inadvertently hear or see anything else on it.

    Well that's what it said in 1980. I bet it says the same thing today. Living in darkest Berks. I used to hear Radio Lubljana on my little portable TV. Oops I wasn't supposed to tell anyone....

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    I for one...

    welcome our multi-headed bovine overlords.

    baaa-ram-ewe

  24. wulff heiss
    Boffin

    no fake

    hi,

    for this to be a fake, too many regular newspapers have picked this up...

    Googling for "micky Maus Polizei" has 21k hits, including "Bild" (german version of sun) - so it must be true. *g*

  25. Nebulo
    Thumb Up

    @Dave Jones

    There used to be a clause prohibiting reception of "unauthorised" transmissions in most forms of UK radio licence, certainly including my amateur 'ticket'. They never did say how you were supposed to know what the transmission was without listening to it, of course, so by the time you know it's technically too late.

    You should be OK with Radio Lubljana, though, as long as it's a legitimate (i.e., not pirate) broadcast station. What they want to stop is you monitoring the local fuzz while you do the bank over, and since they've transferred most official comms to the encrypted Tetra system you'd have to do a lot more than just tuning your radio (or little portable TV, or kiddie toy) these days.

    And actually, police radio was anything but boring - (not) listening to it used (not) to give me a considerable appreciation of the policeman's lot, which is indeed not a happy one. You would (not) hear them being called to domestics, traffic accidents, pub brawls, one after another - all sorts of grim stuff which most of us are fortunate rarely, if ever, to experience at all, never mind having to sort it out. It gave me a lot of respect for the people who spend their entire working life driving from one dismal situation to the next, dealing with the shit end of human affairs. A neat bit of unplanned PR which they've now encrypted away.

  26. Flugal

    Two headed sheep

    You can find it here if El Reg continues to be too busy...

    http://www.truveo.com/Twoheaded-lamb-born-in-Iceland/id/713162673

  27. Cortland Richmond

    What banned was that on?

    Alles was nicht pflichtig ist, ist verboten.

    IOW: What ain't compulsory, is banned!

    (And he says, "What banned was that on?")

  28. Danny

    Chinese espionage

    Wait until the Daily Mail hear the Chinese are smuggling spy equipment into the EU to support their evil botnets.

    I could still listen in to the police here after Channel 5 started broadcasting in 1997, as they were on the same frequency. The police were slightly more interesting than Channel Five.

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