U.S. Makes Plans for GPS Shutdown 945
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."
Why is that ironic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Seems like a prudent thing to do. (Score:3, Insightful)
I do not think that means what you think it means. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:2, 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.
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?
Remember the Borg shields? (Score:3, Insightful)
What about (Score:2, Insightful)
This is stupid (Score:3, Insightful)
Let's form a line (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyone who says the government is doing too much after 9/11 over there.
Everyone who says both please insert gun in mouth and pull trigger.
Thank you.
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
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.
Act of war against the European Union/Russia? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Evil Bastard (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:5, Insightful)
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>
E911 & AGPS? (Score:2, Insightful)
Wouldn't this affect the usability of this?
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.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Evil Bastard (Score:3, Insightful)
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
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't have enough GPS receivers, and had to buy a bunch off the shelf and give them to their infantry units. So, during the invasion of Kuwait and Iraq they turned of SA and everyone's GPS data all over the world got better.
The DoD permanently switched off SA sometime recently - in 2000, I believe. Turning off SA improved GPS accuracy from about 90m to about 15m. WAAS further improved that to about 5m. WAAS is only available in North America.
To the lamers overreacting... (Score:3, Insightful)
For those of you who didn't RTFA, here are some key points from it.
- President Bush has ordered plans
- Any shutdown of the network inside the United States. Use GLONASS if you like.
- Any government-ordered shutdown or jamming of the GPS satellites would be done in ways to limit disruptions to navigation and related systems outside the affected area, the White House said.
-
There have been some good question and points raised (like HOW will this work), but those are barely audible over the Bush-bashing trolls and the general knee-jerk hysteria.
Long live the paranoid.
Re:Let's form a line (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Nothing, but.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Poor mans cruise missle (Score:1, Insightful)
OTOH, imagine just a dozen of these launched all over the country. No one would know if there was a payload or not. Fore a couple of tens of thousands of dollars, the USA economy could be brought to a halt for days!
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".
Re:Could someone tell George... (Score:3, Insightful)
Try reading those roadsigns from a plane.... Oh that's right, this is Slashdot where if a single solution doesn't solve every problem it doesn't solve any problems.
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.
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.
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.
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
It's easy to create a digitally controlled rocket (or turbine) powered plane. It's not hard to add in explosives to the nose. The trick is converting the GPS information to heading information for control.
Also note that this would require an controled bombing arc. As this setup couldn't dodge a building. A 60 degree launch angle up to 3,000 to 5,000 feet and a controlled fall, would give you a couple of miles away from the target.
What's really scary is that i sorted the basics of this out in the past 5 minutes. The exact math will take a while longer.
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.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:But GPS HELPED us during 9/11 attack... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Great Idea (Score:3, Insightful)
And mess with the communications too. All CDMA cellular base stations are syncronized to GPS for timing. Without it, the base stations cannot hand off calls between sites. Also, many telephone switches are moving to (if they haven't already) GPS basedmaster clock/sync sources.
Of course, being forward thinking they have removed the old system, because it's "obsolete".
What happens to public safety and 9-1-1 systems? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:3, Insightful)
Such as the US blocking the EU's Galilei service?
Re:Seems like a prudent thing to do. (Score:2, Insightful)
Or it can be turned off to create a panic, get people thinking about terrorists, and futher push people's acceptance of anything the government does, no matter how damaging.
Honestly. Does it make any sense at all to cripple our own capablities to make sure an enemy doesn't use them? Why don't we all just set off EMPs around the world and bomb everyone back to the Stone Age? That might stop a terrorist attack. It might also cripple the world economy and create widespread destruction and chaos. But hey, if it stops the terrorists, we should do it, right?
Re:Poor mans cruise missle (Score:1, Insightful)
My point is that for the most part, counter terrorism should focus on people, NOT weapons. There are hundreds of weapons that one may fabricate from materials allowed in aircraft cabins. Why the hell are they worried about my pocket knife or screwdriver?
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:3, Insightful)
Our enemies? (Score:2, Insightful)
The whole US/THEM mentality is such a sad dementia. When will people learn? Its just people trying to get by.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm european by the way, terrorism has been here for decades, just like in the rest of the world, go ask the israeli's, the Irish, the Spanish, the South Africans
Welcome to the club.
Sure a suitcase nuke may kill 50k people, but when you do a risk assesment, you have two factors you have to take into account: the impact if it goes wrong and the chance it will go wrong.
When evaluating risk prevention measures, the same two factors are important: does the measure reduce the impact and/or does the measure reduce the chance of it happening.
If you look at it objectively, the US government is WAY off, the measures are very ineffective, the 9/11 terrorists would have been captured if the existing measures at the time had been executed correctly, go fix that, instead of adding more privacy invading measures that won't actually reduce impact or chance of another attack.
I really get tired of simple minded folks who think the solution is to do nothing simply because doing something might make them a tiny bit uncomfortable in some way.
It's all a question of priorities, is it worth taking freedom away from ALL americans to possibly save a few ? Mostly it is not, some freedoms are too important to give up, for whatever reason.
If you want to save lives, you'd have to look at how do I save the most lives with the least cost (cost in money and impact on people's lives)
I'm not saying there should be no terrorism prevention, but the amount of money and effort going to preventing terrorism is disproportionate to the actual risk. More lives could be saved by correctly prioritizing the risks that exist in our world.
Re:I doubt you understand anything. (Score:3, Insightful)
All the 911 attacks happened in less than an hour. The Madrid bombings were within five minutes of each other. Apart from these major events, most terrorist attacks tend to be independent with no warning or follow-up attacks.
Also, for how long are they going to keep GPS offline until they decide it's 'safe' to turn it on again? A day? A week? When the threat level goes green? Never?
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?
Re:well (Score:4, Insightful)
Humility?
Re:Our enemies? (Score:3, Insightful)
Like it or not, the US government represents you to the world. When the US government exerts pressure on some other government to get their way (Hm, lets encourage EU not to help country X because said country signed a certain treaty) the people of that country will naturally resent America. Not the US Government, but the US as a whole, including the people in it.
Re:Let's form a line (Score:3, Insightful)
It's not a contradiction, since you don't specify what the enough refers to.
Before 9/11, the govt didn't do enough to ... monitor radical Islamic groups; coordinate intelligence; improve cockpit security; etc.
After 9/11 the govt did too much... to attack any group of Muslims (except of course Saudis); harass innocent travellers with ineffectual identity checks and rules; remove emabrrassing information from public view; etc.
in a related story (Score:3, Insightful)
just beause there's a Big Red Switch at your disposal does NOT mean you have the RIGHT to pull it.
"oooh, what's THIS pretty big red button do?"
(a bush cabinet member was asked about our future on this planet. his response was of the form "well, we don't know how many more generations we will have on this planet; I mean, before OUR LORD returns, and ends all life on this planet."
kind of makes shutting down GPS seem like a warm-up event of some kind...
Re:EU member nations have similar plans! (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:Its called WAAS (Score:3, Insightful)
No. Differential GPS uses two GPS receivers, one of which is usually fixed at a well-known (ie accurately surveyed) location. That typically implies a land-based receiver.
http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0103/different
WAAS is like DGPS, except it uses two geostationary satellites.
Almost. WAAS uses land-based reference sites at accurately known locations. The satellites are used only for data relay; the reference sites provide all the correction data.
http://gpsinformation.net/exe/waas.html
disabling and weakening GPS (Score:2, Insightful)
I'd've expected stratigic, on-demand, regional weakening or disabling to have been built into this system from Day One.
Frankly, I'm surprised they don't already "permanently" lower the precision over areas that are "high probability" targets for GPS-guided missiles, such as certain ports and the entire Washington, D.C. area. For a missile, being 100 meters off course can mean missing the target completely.
Sad side effect to be expected? (Score:2, Insightful)
I mean, won't designers of systems for that type of services go: "But what if the GPS or Galileo is shut down? Then we need an alternative! Might as well not bother with GPS or Galileo and spend our money/time designing the alternative..."
This would be a waste of a perfectly good system, in my opinion, but an understandable design decision for any designer who needs to be sure her design will work.
There has never been doubt in my mind that for simple military reasons the US have had measures to shutdown the service. But the fact that they're openly advertising it seems to indicate to me that they will not hesitate to actually use those measures whenever they think it might help in the way of "preventing terrorists from using it". Nevermind the arguments by others in this thread for why that's fairly useless to begin with.
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:3, 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.
With apologies to Hans Gruber: "Systems which cannot be shut down are shut down automatically in response to a terrorist incident. You ask for miracles, Theo
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:1, Insightful)
If I were Osama, I would be laughing my ass off. The ~3000 people he killed on 9/11 turned out to be only icing on the cake. The more powerful effect he has had with such a small attack is that he threw the country into fear, caused economic hardship, and managed to get our leaders to take away our freedoms. Sorry, but the loss of freedom and everything else is far more important than any lives lost. Osama has devastated this country and the only thing people can think about is suitcase nukes? (Which, by the way, would be difficult for even the US to pull off, technologically speaking.)
The best way to reduce terrorism is to look at your foreign policy and see if it makes sense from the perspective of the people who hate you. Frankly, US foreign policy in regards to the middle east is a fucking disaster of galactic proportions. If I was from the middle east I would want to attack the US too. I do not condone what they do but I can certainly understand it. You can only shit on people for so long before it comes back to haunt you.
Re:Why is that ironic? (Score:3, Insightful)
U.S. citizens paid for defense of their freedoms and lives, and the GPS is a tool for defense. Should U.S. citizens also be able to use military air transports as their personal airlines? They are a tool for defense that U.S. citizens paid for. What about spy satellites? Many citizens would like to know what their neighbors are doing on the other side of their tall fence. They paid for the spy satellite systems, right?
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:1, Insightful)
Of course, you also refused to join the League of Nations after WWI, rendering it useless and thus incapable of blocking Italian imperial ambitions in Ethopia, which sent a strong message to Nazi Germany that it could do what it liked.
Then, you sat around on your bums for a year or so while the British Empire alone stood against the Nazis. And then you used Lend Lease to empty every piece of silver from the British treasury.
Ah yes, you Americans. Heroes through and through.
That is called projection. As in projecting your faults on others. Yes, most of the European powers would indeed take possession and try to keep anything they won in War. Therefore they assume we have the same motivations. But we aren't European. Sometimes this is a good thing, not so other times. This time though, it is a good one. We have no longterm designs on the Middle East.
It's called oil. Of course the US has long-term plans.
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.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:3, Insightful)
Additionally, you are soon going to be in an economic war with nearly the entire world. History will prove what it always has, the large empires collapse when they get too greedy. Personally, I am working towards that collapse by not buy American products (as much as possible).
Seeing as how your political philosophy has been on the wrong side of the major conflicts the US has been involved in lately (WWII, Vietnam, the Cold War/WWIII) the safe money would be on you being wrong yet again on WWIV on that basis alone.
Umm. WWIII??? Whahahaha. Boy, not only do you parrot back the propaganda from your government perfectly, but you even proove the stereotype that americans are self-centered. There is no WWIII. The US beating up some helpless arabic countries does not constitute a world war.
However, there just might be a WWIII in the near future, with everyone on one side, and the US on the other. You figure out who is the 'wrong' side.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:3, Insightful)
Yep, and the world noticed that and by everything I can tell greatly appreciated it. That generation of Americans has a lot to be proud of. However, it wasn't long before we started to burn through that good will. Maybe it's just me, but the burn rate seems to have gone up a lot in the last two years. However, American pride has not diminished in relation with the actions taken. I've always believed that pride is justified by actions, not vice-versa.
The America of today is not the America of 1945. Using WWII as an example of our good intent only throws current events into sharper relief.
We have no longterm designs on the Middle East.
A telling moment for me was in the debates, when Kerry said it was important to demonstrate that we had no long-term designs on the Middle East. Bush made no comment. Probably because if he had, the obvious rebuttle would have mentioned the huge permament military bases we're building in Iraq.
By the way, there is a narrow difference between outright imperialism and the pseudo-imperialism where you place a "soverign" but for all intents and purposes puppet government in power and tie the economy of the country to your own corporations while maintaining a massive military presence. The only people who are fooled by this difference are the ones doing it.
In other words, if it is true that we (meaning the government) have no long term designs on the Middle East, we are a long way from proving it.
Re:Trouble for CDMA cellphones? (Score:2, Insightful)
great!
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:3, Insightful)
"They hate us for our Freedom."
"Only a Terrorist has use for Civil Liberties"
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.
Re:Incorrect: Understand the way it's shut off (Score:1, Insightful)
But you can take over Denmark with plastic guns and plaster bombs. Indeed, at the smallest sight of trouble the Danish roll over and cave in, just watch their "performance" on the European Council meeting of May 18th...