Apple Disables Egyptian iPhones' GPS 278
floydman writes "Apparently the Egyptian government is paranoid about its community using GPS devices, to the degree that it demanded Apple remove any GPS functionality from its iPhone 3G.
They claim that 'GPS functionality should be limited to military purposes.' Egyptian blogger Ahmed Gabr brought this issue up in another article, and talks about how this does not make sense, since Google maps and the like can be used. I also happen to know for a fact that most of the modern cars in Egypt have built-in GPS systems."
Re:Location, location, location... (Score:3, Informative)
Note, I'm not affiliated with SparkFun in any way. I'm also not condoning terrorist action, just pointing out how easy it is nowadays with cheap and easy access to the necessary technology.
Re:Location, location, location... (Score:5, Informative)
There are other options. The comparison with car GPS is interesting - ok, they don't mind people navigating and mapping roads, since they are public anyway. But small GPS devices that look like mobile phones - could these be more of a security risk? It is possible to walk to many more locations than can be reached on the public highway. It is possible that they could be used as trigger devices, just like in the Madrid train bombings [wikipedia.org]. Consider that the phones are used as timers, and that one of the standard protocols in use in security sensitive areas now is to jam RF and cell phone frequencies to block this kind of trigger. It's not a huge leap to realise that a GPS device could be similarly linked, and would provide an accurate non-blockable trigger for a vehicle based bomb.
It sounds as though Egypt bans or disables all personal GPS devices. I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise that a government is concerned about the military implications - remember that the United States only turned off Selective Availability [wikipedia.org] 8 years ago, and this was only after they developed new technology to actively jam GPS signals in targetted regions. And don't forget the political fallout [allacademic.com] after the EU decided to implement the Galileo M-code overlay [findarticles.com] inside the same frequency band as the US military GPS in order to ensure that there was no way to block one without blocking the other. GPS technology has traditionally been militarily and politically sensitive, but at the same time we are now seeing the rise of a new world where most human are going to have cell phones and GPS devices. This is inevitably going to cause some social conflict as societies adjust to the new reality.
Re:Swell plan (Score:3, Informative)
iPhone-style assisted GPS uses cell towers to help get a quicker fix but does not require anything besides the pure GPS signal from the satellites. It's just that the pure satellite signal will require ~30 seconds to get a fix instead of the 1 second you get when the cell network helps out.
Re:Swell plan (Score:1, Informative)
When did iPhone 3G get to be a SAT phone? GPS may work 100 miles in the desert but you're not going to get any other usable signal... so you better hope you're still ambulatory and can get close enough to a cell tower to make that phone call.
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Re:DRM (Score:1, Informative)
Why is this story tagged DRM o_O Disabling a feature for a specific country isn't considered to be DRM, right?
Because the DRM features on the iPhone allows Apple to do this remotely. As in, if you take your phone into the country, when it connects with a local cell tower, the tower automatically turns off your GPS capability.
Or to put it another way, in the name of DRM Apple has a backdoor into every iPhone that can be used to do, well, pretty much whatever they want (or a hacker wants) with your phone.
Re:Swell plan (Score:2, Informative)
It would take about ten seconds to write an iPhone app that gives access to the raw data, and indeed a trivial search of the App Store reveals many such apps already there, several of which are free.
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:5, Informative)
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http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/hans_rosling_shows_the_best_stats_you_ve_ever_seen.html [ted.com]
Re:Anonymous Coward (Score:1, Informative)
Start at 14:00 if you don't want to watch the whole thing...
Re:Why do Egyptians need GPS anyway? (Score:2, Informative)