The MSM Media's Transparent 'El Lector' Act

07/01/2026

Here we are again.

There are two bills, A11199A and S10079, open in New York State now designed to concentrate access to encrypted public safety radio transmissions to whomever the state designates as legitimate newsgatherers. They are a re-worked A3516 which was vetoed by Governor Kathy Hochul last December.

The travesty of these and of previous efforts in New York State is how narrow and blatant they are at protecting the principle of information commodification to the direct benefit of just a few corporations involved in the framework of profit-driven news gathering.

Motions to preserve a free view into a benevolent public safety apparatus should absolutely exist; there is a legit effort to do something about keeping public safety operations in the clear, and a legit hope of and value to codifying through law said access.

But, these and the previous bills, completely fuck it up.

Guaranteed transparency should be fought for the public. Not just a few well-resourced wealthy mainstream media corporations so aware of the stakes with respect to their own survival against social media, they can't even bring themselves to posture as advocates for a truly free press, as anyone would expect them to. If you were hoping for some James Stewart-esqe personality within the TEGNA, Sinclair, or FOX corporations to emerge on the floor of a congress, horse-shoed by corrupt legislative fat cats who sneer and chuckle among each other while he pleads in a croaking tired voice for the trust in each and every American to listen in on police calls -- you can forget it.

Corporate media does not believe in a free press; it believes in a shaped press with "free press characteristics." Ones you can still talk about under 4th of July fireworks but favor their side of the ensuing lopsided circle.

Establishing the free press distinction between themselves and anyone else without the bucks to afford liability insurance, which is someone's clever "moo hah hah" in coming up with this as a defining criteria for "newsgatherer" in these bills, is corporate media's play to assume the role of a sole trusted "El Lector" who reads the daily news to a half dozen rows of factory workers who are expected to keep their heads down and producing.

Extraordinary sanctimonious principles do not make for-profit media exceptional. Money does. And money is exactly what NY State Assembly Bill A11199A and Senate Bill S10079 are all about. Advocating for the siloing of information will make their insights and access, their newsgathering farming, both special and super enriching.

The thousands of personal freelance newsgatherers? The thousands of Facebook community and scanner pages likely many of you and readers rely on more today (as a fact, not hypothesis) - Well guess what: Fuck'em.

Oh sure: All these forms of newsgatherers certainly have a right to exist and to emote, but once a bill like those under consideration pass on to law, only in the shadow of mainstream media's voice. Mainstream media will be the only ones with the story, acquired cheaply, first.

Ultimately BuffScan does not oppose a signing of these bills into law; it just does not support it. To outright oppose after all means not supporting a chink at the armor of public safety push-to-talk radio encryption, which would be the only good thing about it. BuffScan's suspicion is, as it mentioned elsewhere in its channels, that the logistics of providing selective access will prove so burdensome and costly, most public safety agencies will at the end of the day keep relevant push-to-talk traffic public as a way to meet compliance. In such a case, the outright selfishness of corporate media's play here could be overlooked if not laughably ironic.

Or put another way, if any law should be signed it should be one that dismisses the concept of a gold mine's stake in the ethereal passing of valuable airwave chatter, and fairly acknowledges the reality that, tasteful or not, everyone is a "newsgatherer" contributing to a level hive of the everyday narrative.

Police tape. Yes, simple flimsy police tape, seems like an incredibly cheap way to regulate against the dreaded exaggerated idea of the random un-washed masses showing up to critical incident events based on some overheard police call, should that be anyone's genuine concern. Police tape has been super effective for decades upon decades. About as much time as has been the open air broadcasting and access to public safety radio that people used to routinely tune into on their AM home radio sets.

Press organizations should they want to be involved, and legislators, should pursue a law that simply keeps certain push-to-talk public safety communication truly and absolutely public.

  By BuffScan for BuffScan.

A11199A A3516 S10079

Comments (0) | Promote (0) | PermShare | Focuses (113)

Register to Comment

Keep Police Radio Public Act Veto Rationale

12/22/2025

Presented above is Kathy Hochul's rationale for vetoing the Keep Police Radio Public Act last Friday.

My Take

I'll be drip-dropping more pontification on this veto's reasoning as time goes on. There's a lot more to unpack but for now here are my first-take notes:

1. Concerns for privacy that she cites have not been an issue for decades upon decades. Remember, open broadcasting is the default, not a "move to" as the reasoning suggests. Yes of course open communications are exploitable but in those decades upon decades, mitigations to eliminate them in important matters have been successful.

2. At least the reasoning acknowledges the futility of distinguishing between the NY Times and BuffScan or your favorite scanner news coverage Facebook Group. In my opinion the attempt by selfish media sector groups to celebrate their sanctimonies exceptionalism instead of making this fight for the public, created a fatal flaw. Thanks for that MSM.

3. And finally, having this distraction in play removed, it re-asserts the actual mission. The unambiguous goal now is to firmly replace police scanning with something else.

So let's get busy.

  By BuffScan for BuffScan.

A3516

Comments (0) | Promote (0) | PermShare | Focuses (419)

Register to Comment

Governor Kathy Hochul Vetoes Openness Measure

12/20/2025

The Keep Police Radio Public Act has been VETOED by Governor Hochul.

While I sympathize that the Act (AB3516) was selfishly designed to benefit established profit media first, in BuffScan's opinion, it was still a measure of openness and transparency that would have in practice led to keeping open systems for all. BuffScan came to support the bill despite its flaw.

Therefore this is terrible news.

As we do not yet know the reasoning behind the veto, BuffScan defers criticizing the Governor at this time.

And too, this veto is a reminder that it is crucial to replace police scanning with something else. BuffScan will continue to report on and to advocate for just such a revolution.

  By BuffScan for BuffScan.

A3516 OpenComms

Comments (0) | Promote (0) | PermShare | Focuses (397)

Register to Comment

I Found the NYBSA Release

12/17/2025

We Don't Poop in the Water - Exempt Us

Those who keep tabs on BuffScan may recall that prior to my acceptance of the Keep Police Radio Public Act (Assembly Bill A3516), I decried the structure of public safety radio preservation in the act as being the product of a suspiciously selfish agenda by legacy media.

Doing some basic Googling, it seems I wasn't too far off the mark. The New York State Broadcasters Association implies by way of this release that it figured into the bill's evolution (note in the release this phraseology "Our next step is the Governor.").

Selfish because, if you're going to fight to keep public safety communication in the clear for just one group, why not do the obvious thing and make this about keeping everything public in the first place.

Or put another way, just like Senate Bill S416 had it before it was substituted by the currently-poised-to-become-law, A3516.

Keeping a push to keep radio traffic public is not only the obvious fight to have, it's, as I say, the likely practicing outcome, once it becomes clear there is no bullet-proof way to segment this type of action between people and so-called "professional" journalists. Unlike the issue of body armor the same group cites as an example of exempting media houses from something otherwise restricted. Body armor is material goods and can be held, pushed, and pulled back from someone.

Radio carrier, not so much.

The group seemed to put the energy of its cause behind the notion that there hasn't been any significant issue with journalists showing up at crime scenes.

...No New York law enforcement agency has provided any evidence that journalists have been a problem or pose a future problem to police officers...

From the NYSBA release.

...by that logic, I would challenge the group that anyone with a police scanner has ever, beyond nuisance, been more or less a "problem", either, whatever that inference is supposed to mean anyway.

Or, we can tackle this from the other side. Since when haven't journalists showing up at crime scenes not been considered a problem? Have we never heard of anything called the paparazzi? Is there not an entire body of ethical contemplation in journalism and media education precisely because they're always a potential problem?

People reporting truth or telling a story not meant to be told are always someone's problem. Just because a media house slaps a 60 second Subaru commercial over their brand of that problem doesn't "honorably distinguish". Rather it's quite perverse actually.

The reason for the difference between S416 and A3516 are forces striving to narrow access to a powerful now-premium encrypted rich information stream to themselves.

In bringing these words to you, I'm not walking back my newfound support for the imminent law. I'm simply pointing out that my crackpot theory over special interests tailoring a movement to their profit motivated brand of news collection ("professional journalists") is not exactly assuaged when lo and behold I do find such a group with its fingers so close to the scale.

Spotter Watch - Spotters on The Spot

Please note that links to spotter content may require additional login to respective social media platforms like Facebook or X.

• Buffalo Fire Department-Helmets & Hose Wagons went live on Facebook with the ceremonious inauguration of Buffalo's new Battalion Chief along with two new Lieutenants (details available on said feed).

** If you operate a digital place for the presentation of captured news and drama and would like to be regularly reviewed for BuffScan's "Spotters on the Spot", please let me know.

BuffScan Pokey Report

The following are fresh listings in the publicly distributed Erie County Jail Roster as of yesterday.

• AMAYA-MARQUEZ, ESMELIN
• ANDINO, FRANCISCO
• BAXTER, JAMEL J
• CALABRESE, ANTHONY
• COOK, CLARENCE T
• ELDRIDGE, IEESHA
• FABRIZIO, DANIELLE B
• HARGE, DARRELL W
• HUBER, SCOTT
• HUFFMAN, DEJAUN
• JANCZYLIK, JUSTIN
• MCDANIEL, JAMEER
• OFFHAUS, SHAWN
• PLETL, KATIE
• PRIMERANO, ANTHONY S
• RIOS, ANTHONY L
• RODRIGUEZ, EMMANUEL D
• SEXTON, CHRISTOPHER
• WRIGHT, JAMES H

** In providing this convenient aggregate listing please keep in mind the following: Incarceration in county jail does not imply guilt - statistically, most inmates are in fact legally innocent and are only incarcerated pending further legal proceedings. As well, many circumstances including mental health and addiction issues can lead to behavioral turbulence and conflicts with society that result in jail. In noting incarceration status please adopt a compassion-first regard. For a variety of reasons the given list may not be all inclusive of those individuals actually processed.

  By BuffScan for BuffScan.

A3516 BuffScanDaily

Comments (0) | Promote (0) | PermShare | Focuses (422)

Register to Comment

Forgive Me for Being So Encryptic

12/11/2025

Keep Police Radio Public Act - Flawed But Good

Explaining my thought process in ultimately supporting Assembly Bill A3516

In case one doesn't want to watch this video, here's the summary of why BuffScan supports Assembly Bill A3516 (AKA "Keep Police Radio Public Act") despite initial reservation.

The TLDR of it is the guess that the overhead of managing selective access to encrypted police radio, as the new (as of yet unsigned) law imagines, will be so great, that public safety agencies in New York will opt to keep their basic communications open to everyone in some uniform fashion in the first place. Either so that basic radio scanning nerds can continue to tune in alongside whatever "verified" journalists are using scanner radios, or, everyone just clicks on over to Broadcastify.

The law is a validation of my personal advocacy for 30 years now.

Yes, the fact that it was re-honed from the earlier New York Assembly Bill A9728 that was explicitly written such that everyone - not just "deemed journalists" - is suspicious to say the least (looking at you CNN and the like), it is still a shining example of a unique American principle that we would even be having the debate. That a law like this should ever get so close to a governor's pen.

Spotter Watch - Spotters on The Spot

Please note that links to spotter content may require additional login.

• Facebook user Tim Newkirk posted video of an apparent raid or some other formal police action involving things being carted out of a building by police. One commentator believes (and a quick Google Street View confirms) that this happened at Broadway and Sears Street. I happened on this video while reviewing Buffalo Street News 716 where it was shared to.
• Buffalo Street News 716, speaking of, also posted images and video from a school bus accident at Dorothy Street and Baitz Avenue. Details on injuries were light at the time of their posting (though generally, school bus accidents, particularly in bad weather like today, are actually fairly common and rarely result in serious injuries).
• The Southtowns Scanner posted a traffic cam cap of an accident that occurred tonight on the I-90 near mile marker 426.
• Buffalo Fire Department-Helmets & Hose Wagons posted this FD response porn from yesterday 12/10.

** If you operate a digital place for the presentation of captured news and drama and would like to be regularly reviewed for BuffScan's "Spotters on the Spot", please let me know.

BuffScan Pokey Report

The following are fresh listings in the publicly distributed Erie County Jail Roster as of yesterday.

• AVENT, ALVIN
• BARKSDALE, DELRESSA J
• BRADLEY, DENNIS
• COUGHLIN, BRETT W
• DANIELS, GREGG E
• DAVILA, SHEILA
• FRUEHAUF, VINCENT
• GIBSON, MICHAEL T
• HARDEMAN, HORATIO M
• HENN, HEATHER E
• LOFTON, DEVAUGHN
• THOMPSON, JACKEE

** In providing this convenient aggregate listing please keep in mind the following: Incarceration in county jail does not imply guilt - statistically, most inmates are in fact legally innocent and are only incarcerated pending further legal proceedings. As well, many circumstances including mental health and addiction issues can lead to behavioral turbulence and conflicts with society that result in jail. In noting incarceration status please adopt a compassion-first regard. For a variety of reasons the given list may not be all inclusive of those individuals actually processed.

  By BuffScan for BuffScan.

A3516 BuffScanDaily OpenComms

Comments (0) | Promote (0) | PermShare | Focuses (458)

Register to Comment