Comment by fapjacks

There seems to be some incredibly bizarre idea floating around here that it is illegal to MONITOR using the equipment (id est "listen") and that is simply not true, except for listening to cell frequencies. That is in American law, but here's the thing: They will not be able to determine that you're listening on those frequencies without looking at your equipment. You can possess and operate your equipment in monitor mode without a license. One must simply get a license (in most countries) to transmit using the equipment. Now, the other thing I want to mention is that the parent comment is right that the FCC has dogs of war that will chase you down and put you in jail (or levy heavy fines) for operating without a license. And they do chase people down with location equipment. I'm not advocating operating a station without a license, but if you keep the power very low and use it sparsely for testing, you have a very, very small chance of being caught by the FCCs enforcement arm. And in most of these cases of nerds transmitting without a license, they are satisfied with merely confiscating your equipment.