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U.S. Makes Plans for GPS Shutdown
Posted by
michael
on Thu Dec 16, 2004 08:53 AM
from the dead-reckoning dept.
from the dead-reckoning dept.
sailforsingapore writes "Apparently, President Bush is drawing up plans to disable sections of the GPS network in the event of a terrorist attack. The rationale seems to be that it would prevent said terrorists from using the GPS system to direct some sort of attack. The plan would shut down access not only to the GPS satellite network, but projects like the EU's Galileo. Ironically, this comes alongside the President's plan to strengthen the GPS network against deliberate jamming."
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Why is that ironic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes! You make a fake terrorist attack, send a mailbomb or something to the white house, with some luck they will take that as a terrorist attack and shut down the system.
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our military will still be able to access the network, but civilian units will not. Others can't jam us, but we can remove their access. Even differential GPS won't help in that case.
The system was originally designed with this ability in place, as well as an accuracy restriction on civilian units, which was removed in the mid '90s. That restriction can be put back into effect at any time, however, just as the removal of service can be activated.
A few posts back, someone mentioned "black market" units that would offer military access during such a blackout. Those that exist do not work (to my knowledge): each military GPS is coded to the network, and each unit has a unique code to access the network. While I do not have sources at hand, I recall that attempts to spoof such codes were anticipated and protected (unlike, for example, MAC addresses).
As for private industry making GPS "10 times better at a 10th of the cost", it would never happen. The cost of designing, building and putting up 24-30 satellites orbitting at 22,000 miles and then maintaining them, as well as integrating all the security features would prohibit profit anywhere in the near term, even if users were charged a subscription fee. That is why its a great government project: people love it, but a decent profitable business model really isn't available for it.
And as for the "government taking away our rights" argument, well, GPS isn't your right, especially if the government wants to take it away to protect you from attack. Oh, and as far as tax money, it's not yours, it's the government's. That's why it's TAX money; they don't owe you access to every system they build with it, though you are entitled to know what they spend it on. Hopefully, in more cases than not, it will be projects that help the citizens of the country, directly or indirectly. Even if GPS were available to the military only, it would still be helping us indrectly as taxpayers. This in no way means that we are entitled to access to GPS, or that it is a"right" - it most certainly is not. Neither is driving a car or flying an airplane, incidently, as some would suggest.
Parent
Nothing, but.... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem is the Bush Administration is just so arrogant. The Pentagon has plan to do whatever, regardless of what they say they would or wouldn't do. I don't have a problem with this. But, that does not mean it is rational to threat the supposely allied EU countries for an attack of Galileo [space.com]... Let's turn the table around. Imagine what would be Bush's reaction if the French Government say that kind of crap first....
I don't even need to mention other sovereignty countries... It is clear why Bush is hated by so many people around the world.
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:4, Informative)
It's a mutual deal between the EU and the US. They can block each other for small areas, both sides agreed to this.
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you mean a military funded system that we CITIZENS have been given access to because we paid for it?
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Where do you think the military got the money for GPS? Hint: It's as inevitable as death. Yep, you guessed it. Taxes. And you can bet a private enterprise global satellite navigational system would have been twice as good for a tenth of the money. So I wouldn't count myself too lucky.
I use a GPS when I fly and increasingly when I drive. But I don't bow down to the military industrial complex in gratitude. I paid for my share of the GPS system.
Do you feel lucky that your ISP lets you use their internet?
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd love to do more sailing. I may have to. I can't imagine the US government abusing sailors to the same extent they have private pilots the last four years. We have numerous Temporary Flight Restrictions all over the country that have been in place since September 11, 2001. Not sure what's so temporary about them. Even worse, every time some government official travels, there is a 30 mile radius No-Fly zone that pops up with no warning. You can check before taking off, and one of these can pop up around you as you're flying, and it's still your fault.
We are all losing our rights at an unbelievable rate, and being a small group with little political power, private pilots are at the tip of the sword. Of course, when there are no private pilots left, they'll eventually work their way down the list and eliminate the rights of sailors too.
Be glad you're not getting all the government you're paying for.
- Will Rogers
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
The iraqi insurgents are fighting for the US to get the fck out of their country. In fact OBl was fighting to get the US out of saudi. His man beef is with the saudis, not the USA.
As for saddam being an enemy... yeah right, he was gonna throw stones at the US? because he sure didnt have WMDs.
All thsi talk about mysterious 'enemies' is SO similar to the 'red menace' or the 'alien invaders' crap of the sixties. It seems the US govt loves its citizens to stay scared.
Parent
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
how about..."he hates us because we backed him and trained him and his fellow rebels until he was no longer needed to fight the russkies. then we abandoned him and left him to fend for himself."
we have a pretty long history of sticking our nose in complex regional issues, then bailing out after we've got what we needed. read a history book sometime.
Parent
Re:well (Score:4, Insightful)
Humility?
Parent
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:4, Interesting)
But hey, perhaps it's also a "good idea" to stop ambulances from going onto the streets in the aftermath of a terrorist attack. After all, the "terrrsts" might just hijack an ambulance and use it against us! Ph3ar!
Parent
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, people have a really skewed perception of risk.
On 9/11 , about 2800 people (exact number is still unclear) suffered a terrible death in the terrorist attacks. Yes it was horrible. No, we don't want it to happen again.
However, the current measures taken by the US government are going way too far, it's not worth reducing freedom for in any way whatsoever, the risk of being killed in a terrorist attack is extremely small. Yet, somehow, the perception of this risk is inflated enormously.
To put things in perspective, last year there were 41,600 traffic deaths in the U.S. (15,700 alcohol related).
It seems clear to me that unsafe driving and DUI is a MUCH bigger risk to the US people than a 9/11 style terrorist attack.
The amount of money and effort spent on "the war on terrorism" is way out of proportion in relation to the risk involved. At the same time, I hear nothing about a "war on unsafe driving" or a "war on DUI", on the contrary, the government even seems to be promoting the use of SUV's which are proven to be more unsafe then 'regular' cars.
The american people should wake up, kick the idiot out of the Big Chair(tm), and put someone there who has his/her priorities straight.
Parent
Dude, welcome to the 20th century. (Score:4, Insightful)
State-based imperialism has been shown ineffective. It's unwieldy, it doesn't really offer any advantages, and it's risky; when you attempt to retain dominance in an area through military means, sometimes people fight back through military means, and it's not always possible to paint the people fighting back against an invading/occupying force as the aggressors. Plus, you can only maintain state-based imperialism if you continuously control the state that runs the empire, and in a democracy like America this runs the risk of temporary local power transfers leading to your empire being disassembled.
The important thing now is economy-based imperialism. There's no need to rule the world when you can just own it. The wave that's been building since 1950, and the wave of the future, is for empire to be economic in nature, for military force to be used only when necessary to support that economic empire, and for the states-- which are increasingly irrelevant anyway-- to be ignored except when they stand in the way of that empire's interests.
Of course, occasionally America may resort to traditional, invade-and-occupy methods of imperialism to maintain its economic empire and ensure its spheres of interest. But this is usually not necessary, and only under certain circumstances is it the appropriate tool to use. Who on earth would try to invade or occupy Europe, anyway? Twice now in the last 250 years Europe has faced a rogue superpower trying to conquer the continent through military means, and both times it repelled and squashed that superpower against staggering odds. Only a very poor businessman would accept those odds even if there were a good reason.
Parent
Seems like a prudent thing to do. (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not think that means what you think it means. (Score:5, Insightful)
Existing capability? (Score:5, Interesting)
When Clinton allowed for more accurate GPS signals to be used by civilians, it sure seemed like they just flipped a switch one day and it was suddenly more accurate for everyone...
Its called WAAS (Score:5, Informative)
Read more about it
http://www.garmin.com/aboutGPS/waas.html
Parent
Re:Its called WAAS (Score:3, Insightful)
I've heard the story told - don't know if it's true or not - that during the first Persion Gulf war, the US military didn'
NO! (Re:Its called WAAS) (Score:5, Informative)
I work in the Testing & Evaluation of WAAS. WAAS and Selective Availability are not the same (or opposites). WAAS was never "militarized".
When Clinton ordered for the switch to be flipped (so to speak), what was done was the disabling of Selective Availability, which was a purposeful degradation of the civilian GPS signal (L1). The military had (and still has) a second (encrypted) signal that a military receiver must have a key to properly use (L2). Using that signal enhances their accuracy, whether or not Selective Availability is active.
WAAS (Wide Area Augmentation System) is something else. WAAS uses Geostationary Satellites to enhance (augment) GPS accuracy & precision in the USA. Not all GPS receivers use WAAS. Accuracy of a WAAS receiver is increased in either case (that is, with or without Selective Availability) relative to a non-WAAS receiver, but there is a noticeable difference from SA.
Not all GPS receivers use WAAS, but Selective Availability has been disabled, which affects all GPS receivers.
Parent
In related news... (Score:4, Funny)
Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Great Idea (Score:5, Insightful)
What's next? Cutting off electricity so that the terrorists can't use it against people?
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Great Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Sailors, meaning those who spend their working lives at sea, are by nature conservative. They haven't forgotten how to use a compass, a clock, a ship's log, a sextant. There are legacy systems like Loran still in service.
The ones who will get in trouble are the small boaters who only know GPS.
Parent
Re:Great Idea (Score:4, Insightful)
Then you have to do it the old way; sea charts, compasses, a trained navigator.
However, at night the navigator has to rely on lighthouses, and the problem is that (in Sweden at least), there are fewer and fewer lighthouses running. They cost quite a lot in electricity and maintanance, and since even small sailboats can afford GPSes and even navigation computers these days the authorites are chosing to save money by turning them off.
So if you are out at sea a stormy night and you GPS fails because it breaks, or because Dubya crapped his pants and turned off the satellites, you could be in trouble.
Parent
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
On a serious note, I would say more than 99% of the population would never even notice if all the GPS satellites suddenly fell from the sky in unison.
Dan East
Remember the Borg shields? (Score:3, Insightful)
This is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Whats the point of shutting down the system? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's really nothing new here (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder what the per-hour or per-day economic impact of disabling GPS over a heavily poplulated USA region?
A decent number of aircraft/airports that use GPS approaches would have to go back to more primitive instrument landings (more delays); many trucking/shipping companies rely on GPS for tracking goods. Then there are surveyers and agriculture and such that may use GPS augmented with some local beacon for high accuracy.
What other key economic uses of GPS are there?
GPS Airport Approaches (Score:4, Interesting)
What about the growing number of airports that use GPS-only instrument approaches? Geezsh, why doesn't he just shut down the VOR and NDB systems while he's at it.
Besides, a Determined Terrorist could build their own ground-based DGPS-like system for specific targets without too much difficulty.
Real impact? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm guessing this is some off the wall PR stunt to make people feel better that they can turn of GPS in an instant but the real facts are you can't shut down most of the sats unless they are in range of one of the few control stations and even then it might be a one way trip for some of the older ones.
Turning off GPS might just wipe out a great deal of mobile phones and other communications. It would be bad for aviation as well because one its turned off, there is no reason to ever turn it back on as far as pilots are concerned. And there is that small problem that the Europeans are building Galileo and the Russians still have GLONASS.
After seeing what Airbus is doing to Boeing and all the other military messes, I'm wondering who the politicians are working for because I know its not for the tax payers.
Act of war against the European Union/Russia? (Score:3, Insightful)
Evil Bastard (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Evil Bastard (Score:3, Insightful)
rational behind proposal (Score:3, Informative)
Makes perfect sense... (Score:3, Insightful)
<rant delivery="sarcastic" offtopic="slightly">
Yeah, this is perfectly logical. Everyone knows that only terrorists would be using GPS during a terrorist attack, and not, say, emergency workers, the FBI, etc. God forbid that a single terrorist be allowed to use the GPS network, regardless of the fact that he's probably already (a) planned for that contingency (esp. since the Bush administration has helpfully announced the fact that the GPS system might be killed at will) or (b) already done all the legwork with GPS while picking his targets and coordinating the attack (so that he can execute the attack without it).
In fact, I also applaud the Bush administration for restricting our freedoms to eliminate the risk that any of the pesky terrorists might receive some. Freedom is a limited resource and must be hoarded and parceled out accordingly, and we can't afford to waste our freedoms (e.g. 1st amendment freedom of assembly, 5th and 6th amendment right to a fair trial) on even a single terrorist. I commend Bush for indefinitely detaining even suspected terrorists at our luxurious Guantanamo Bay facility (which is far nicer than they deserve, let me tell you), because we can't risk a terrorist experiencing our freedoms. God forbid, we might actually have to let one go due to lack of evidence. Terrorists eat babies! We can't let baby-eaters go free! WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?!?
</rant>
Re:Makes perfect sense... (Score:4, Interesting)
As I mentioned at the start, the rant wanders offtopic. I was referring to the people arrested ^W "detained" and held at Guantanamo Bay for associating with terrorists ^W^W^W "posessing vital intelligence (that magically isn't stale after 3 years)".
No, we don't have a right to GPS signals, but it's yet another example of Bush's 9/11 madness. Should Bush restrict pens and paper next, since terrorists might use them to write letters to each other? Just because terrorists would be inconvenienced doesn't mean it's a worthwhile tradeoff. In particular, killing GPS in an emergency will make the emergency worse, because civilians and emergency services use GPS to coordinate rescue attempts. Killing GPS is doing the terrorists' work for them.
If you think aviators rely exclusively on GPS, you're nuts. There are other navigation systems in place [addr.com] as a fallback, and killing all those navigational systems along with GPS will result in additional dead civilians (because of mid-air collisions, planes running out of fuel and crashing looking for an airport, etc.) on top of whatever the terrorists do.
Parent
"Terrorists" (Score:5, Interesting)
Terrorists will not rely on GPS.
The military is increasing its' reliance on GPS.
therefore
Shutting down the GPS will have no negative effect on the terrorists, but will hamper the military (and probably civil emergency efforts too).
Finally, if the terrorists do mount an attack on us that somehow utilises GPS, it is unlikely we will know about it until after it has happened.
Key Word "PLANS" (Score:5, Insightful)
When - When would it be shut down
Why - Why would it be shut down
Where - Which areas would be shut down
How - How do we shut it down, and how do we operate without it.
Technology Cuts Both Ways (Score:3, Interesting)
It seems to me that the efforts of emergency responders could well be hampered by lack of information, particularly if the information network were shutdown. This includes GPS information. You can never know for certain who will be in a critical position to relay important information. If they don't have it, the system won't be able to respond effetively. (eg, "I just saw a gasoline tanker truck going by at 85 mph down this lonely highway - where am I? I dunno, my GPS isn't working."
A similar characterization could be made of the cell phone network: shutting it down could prevent the kind of remote activated explosives such as the ones used in 3/11 in Madrid, but, at the same time, people needing help or calling the authorities to tell them about a suspicious character fleeing the scene would also be hampered.
There needs to be more thoughtful critical analysis going into security measures and less heavy-handed measures based on fear and knee-jerk reactions.
Cutting off their nose to spite their face (Score:4, Interesting)
I remember watching a special on the Discovery Channel (or maybe it was History? doesn't matter) that did an interview with an Air Force guy whose job it was to scout around on the ground, call in airstrikes on a location, and paint the target with a laser so that the planes could take it out with laser guided munitions.
He would take a GPS reading of his current location, then use a laser range finder, an electronic compass, and a bit of math to come up with a lat/long reading for the target, which was usually several kilometres away. This would get the planes in the right spot and once they were there the laser guidance would do the rest.
Problem was, the US issue GPS they gave him was HUGE. We are talking the size of a ham radio here, weighing around five pounds or perhaps more. Nobody in that job uses the issued GPS. Instead they order a civilian GPS and use that instead because they are tiny and weigh as much as a ham sandwich and not as much a ham radio.
I'm sure there are plenty of other military people out there doing the same thing. If they turn off civilian GPS altogether they might just be screwing their own troops.
Mechanik
Re:Galileo? (Score:5, Informative)
These technical parameters will allow either side to effectively jam the other's signal in a small area, such as a battlefield, without shutting down the entire system.
Parent
Re:Galileo? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Galileo? (Score:4, Insightful)
The EU and US may not get on with each other that well, but they're not going to be so churlish as to allow people to be killed by terrorists.
Parent
Re:Galileo? (Score:4, Insightful)
> but they're not going to be so churlish as to allow
> people to be killed by terrorists.
That is the sensible and pragmatic way to view this, and the way real-world diplomacy usually works out. Except that the current administration wouldn't put it in such cooperative and non-threatening language, without the possibility to flex muscle. Usually it starts with sneers and "Old Europe" masked by coughs, only to later degenerate into "hey, old buddy" and "could you spare a few thou troops".
Parent
Re:So? (Score:3, Informative)
"The system is used by countless civilians as well, who can use the GPS's Standard Positioning Service worldwide free of charge. [...]
On May 1, 2000, US President Bill Clinton announced that this "Selective Availability" would be turned off. However, for military purposes, "Selective Deniability" may still be used to, in effect, jam civilian GPS units in a war zone or global alert while still allowing military units to have full functionality. European c