Intentional GPS Jamming On the Increase 243
benst writes "Here's yet another way to measure the success of GPS: by the efforts to negate it. While unintentional jamming continues to rise, intentional jamming by both foreign military forces and at-home miscreants of various stripes has shown increased vigor in the past six months. Related here are recent instances of intentional jamming on each side of the border, and (briefly outlined) one initiative mounted by the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) to counteract it. Also, here are some ways to detect and prevent jamming."
Re:Ways to prevent jamming. (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't try and down the satellite... too much effort
Just put loads of debris in the same orbit at a greatly different speed ... that should disable any satellite .... ... China did that by blowing up one of their own satellites ....
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I think they should be jamming GPS in some places. Or more specifically, start jamming some people's GPS. [...] I know one bridge that has been hit 12 times in the last 3 years by trucks that were too tall.
You don't need a GPS jammer.
If your bridge is 8 feet high, you simply need a metal arch 9 feet high, and a 'low bridge' sign suspended from it by two one-foot pieces of chain.
Hence, any driver approaching the bridge who should fail to notice the 'low bridge' sign will have their attention drawn to it when it collides with their vehicle, causing a loud noise but less danger than a vehicle-bridge collision.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
The GPS is not the problem here, it merely exposes an already-present problem. Stupid drivers who don't know the height/width of their vehicle (despite having driving qualifications that require them to do so). Stupid drivers who can't read signs. Stupid drivers who LOOK AT THEIR GPS while they are driving - every single GPS has a warning on it about this, some of them even announce it every time you turn them on. EYES ON THE ROAD. Then, using a GPS is no more dangerous than taking a driving test - you are following oral instructions from something within the car but your FULL attention is on the road. If your driving examiner tells you to mow the old lady down or speed up to 80 in a 30 area, you wouldn't do it, so don't follow what the GPS tells you blindly.
It's like saying that speed cameras are at fault because people brake heavily before them. They are not, they are exposing the problem that stupid drivers have always existed and yet nothing is done about them. You should ALREADY be at the speed limit (in fact, significantly less than, in almost all circumstances). If you have to brake heavily, the problem is YOU. YOU have created the hazard yourself. In the same way, you can't "blame" a plastic bag flying in front of your car for the accident that meant you hit someone in front, who was not a safe distance away. YOU were too close. YOU shouldn't be. YOU did not have a safe braking distance between you and the car in front. The plastic bag didn't press the throttle for you or cut your brake lines.
The solution to these problems is not to jam GPS or get rid of speed cameras, but to START TAKING PEOPLE'S LICENSES AWAY. If you do either of the above, you are NOT fit to drive. You would not pass the legally-required driving standard that you HAD to pass to get a license in the first place. We know you're CAPABLE of doing it because you have done it at some point in the past. So you have NO excuse. If a pilot crashed his plane because he was going too low, he'd not only have his license revoked, he'd be before a serious court very, very quickly. What makes you think a ton of solid metal on four wheels should be any different? Or worse, in the case of lorries, up to 18 tons in the hands of someone who can't tell they won't fit under a bridge! Do you want drivers like that on the road, who can't judge to within a foot or so whether they'll make contact?
Don't blame the GPS, blame the idiot who didn't read the signs.
secret signals (Score:5, Insightful)
I would say the obvious solution to jamming is to have secret signals from the satellites. If you use spread-spectrum techniques your signals become more resistant to jamming. It's possible you might even make your signal nearly undetectable, so that your enemies don't even know it exists.
This being a well-known technique in military radio communications, I would be a little surprised if (1) there weren't already "black" SS signals available to the military, or (2) there will be soon enough.
They may not be especially worried about this. It's not like it's hard to detect someone jamming you, and if you're in a war situation a HARM missile can take care of them for you. Generally a big radio signal is a bit of a liability in a war zone. Makes you stand out, more or less like an electromagnetic bull's-eye painted on your chest.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
I was with you until the significantly-less-than-the=speedlimit part.
That's just ridiculous. Speed limits are almost as a rule too *low*, not too *high* -- and on a highway, traffic moving significantly slower than the majority of other vehicles presents a hazard. A car going 5mph under the speed limit is more of a hazard than a car going 5mph over -- why? Because the slow car causes ALL the traffic moving at the speed limit to pass it, while the fast car causes ONLY ITSELF to pass traffic moving at the speed limit.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like saying that speed cameras are at fault because people brake heavily before them. They are not, they are exposing the problem that stupid drivers have always existed and yet nothing is done about them. You should ALREADY be at the speed limit (in fact, significantly less than, in almost all circumstances). If you have to brake heavily, the problem is YOU. YOU have created the hazard yourself. In the same way, you can't "blame" a plastic bag flying in front of your car for the accident that meant you hit someone in front, who was not a safe distance away. YOU were too close. YOU shouldn't be. YOU did not have a safe braking distance between you and the car in front. The plastic bag didn't press the throttle for you or cut your brake lines.
It is amazing how many people fail to understand that. However, maintaining a safe braking distance between yourself and the car in front can be almost as dangerous as going to close. People will abruptly change lanes, usually without using the indicator light to warn other drivers of their intention or only switching on the light after they have begun changing lanes, and then proceed to cut you off. The result is all to often that you have to slam down on the brakes to avoid slamming into the car that cut you off. And that is exactly what you were trying to avoid in the first place by maintaining a safe braking distance.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks for making my point. Shopping malls are on private property. That is at least ONE order of intelligence higher than federal, state, and local governments.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah yes, let's continue to cater our lives to the lowest common denominator. After all, taking GPS away from people who use it responsibly is far better than other solutions that might be evident...like say increasing fines for asshats who are not paying attention and hit bridges.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Good point. A state trooper once told me that the absolute safest speed to travel was the AVERAGE speed of the cars around you. Don't go slower than the rest of the cars, and don't go any faster either.
I won't call the parent of your post arrogant exactly, but his type reminds of the people who think it's okay to drive 61 mph in a 65 mph zone in the FAST LANE.
Yeah, sure they are technically correct but intentionally and more than a bit arrogantly lack any pragmatic approach to driving on the road.
It does not matter if the law says 65. If everybody is doing 74, and some people in the fast lane insist on doing 85, then getting in the fast lane and stubbornly insisting on doing 61 creates an unsafe environment for the rest of the drivers.
I have relatives that drive on the Autobahns tell me that if somebody got into the fast lane on the Autobahn and did not get up to speed that the police would pull them over immediately and cite them. If somebody stayed too long in the fast lane, they would be cited too. The leftmost lane is ONLY used for passing. Can you even imagine if that was enforced in the US?
Re:This must be an urban legend (Score:1, Insightful)
a very un-slashdot-like article (Score:5, Insightful)
That second link is seven pages. Normally anything posted to /. that's more than say, three pages, consists of 400k size pages of advertisements, banners, and otherwise obnoxious noise with maybe three paragraphs (4k or so) of actual content in the middle of the page, that you have to continuously click (NEXT PAGE) to read the next few sentences on.
Not that one. Actual, real content. Multiple pages of real information. What has the world come to? Someone's posting content for the purpose of actually informing us, rather than burying us in cheap banner hits.
The first link is possibly even better than that though. The same information density, in only ONE page. Normally they'd have spread that among at least five banner-whoring pages? Kudos to gpsworld.com for serving their readers. It's pages like that which make me wish I could leave my banner-blockers turned off all the time.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
It kinda makes sense.
McD's is a mega-corp who makes more money by being convenient. It's convenient for a trucker to know whether or not they're going to damage their ride, and it's convenient for McD to not have to kill their profits by constantly repairing smashed buildings.
Bridges OTOH are lowest-bidder type contracting (I'm assuming). The contractor gets no benefit if they're never called back for repairs and overhauls.
Re:secret signals (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tomahawk Jamming / LGB (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, don't forget that SEALs usually are the first on the scene to paint targets with a laser so LGBs can be deployed from high altitude aircraft to take things like jamming equipment out.
There is a definite threat, but rest assured, our ability to blow stuff up is not greatly hindered by GPS jamming.
Re:Left lane passing ONLY (Score:4, Insightful)
Besides on the autobahn going 75 mph feels like you are in a traffic jam. 125 mph is pretty normal on the autobahn and 185 mph is not unheard of, of course you should not go those speed when the roads are busy.
Just a reminder: If you are involved in an accident going at 80mph (130 km/h) or more, it is deemed to be your fault unless you can prove that the accident was unavoidable even at lower speed. So if you go at 125 mph, passing other cars, and you crash into someone who pulls out without realizing you were coming, it is _your_ fault. Most likely it will be considered "gross negligence" instead of just negligence, which means your insurance doesn't pay. So you'll pay for the damage to your car out of your own pocket, and the insurance will do whatever they can to recover the damage to the other car from you.
Re:secret signals (Score:3, Insightful)
High explosives can be pretty convincing.
This basically shows that all security, at some point, boils down to heavily armed people.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely that would be the safest. People could also drive in the right most lane except for passing as well. Nobody would drive right next to each other in the lanes either. Everybody spread out finding their position on the road all doing 65 mph.
Only if all the cars were driven by robots.
Please also note that I agreed that ALL people doing the same speed would be the safest. It is not the 65 mph that creates the safe environment, but all the cars going nearly the same speed.
That is why I said some people lacked a pragmatic approach to driving. Sometimes the real conditions in life are not ideal and you have to be practical and adapt accordingly. Drivers that absolutely insist on doing 65 mph on the highway in the fast lane cannot accept the reality around them. That is just being stubborn. These people have an attitude that they are correct and the rest of the world has to adapt to them.
They may be correct when it comes to the law, but the reality is that they will have other people slammed up their butts all day long. These other people will get frustrated, honk their horns, get aggressive. Eventually, these people will then pass them on the right, which is not the safest thing to do.