![]() What’s more, in the event of war, it is possible that an enemy could wipe out GPS entirely with an anti-satellite weapon or large-scale spoofing. That was the first of a swell of interference involving ships and aircraft, primarily near zones of armed conflict. Over the course of a few months, ships’ GPS positions drifted thousands of miles inland, often to airports. In February 2016, GPS in ports along the Black Sea was spoofed. Scott says these events are becoming more commonplace.Īnother type of interference, called “spoofing,” uses a phony signal to trick a GPS receiver with false position. A 2009 Department of Justice report said that one in 13 victims of stalkers were tracked with GPS or other surveillance, and some victims use jammers to stay hidden. Thieves could use jammers to make stolen high end cars untraceable. “There is a lot of motivation (to jam) that is usually criminal or related to domestic abuse,” says Logan Scott, a GPS expert consultant. A few years later, the government gave the Coast Guard $500,000 to study jamming disruptions because they “ can cause severe problems for ship navigation, port security, and situational awareness.” Since most ports rely on GPS for operations like moving containers around, the port was all but shut down. In 2014, a mid-Atlantic container port halted operations for seven hours due to jammed GPS signals. The trucker was eventually caught because he absentmindedly left the jammer on in the parked truck long enough for the FCC triangulate his position and to catch him. But when he drove near Newark Airport, the jammer interfered with the GPS system that guides pilots during their final approach. Because the source of the interference is difficult to trace, jammers are popular among truckers, car thieves, and anyone who doesn’t want to be found.įor example, in 2013, a New Jersey truck driver was caught using an illegal jammer so his employers wouldn’t be able to track where he went in the company truck. Such small “jammer” antennas (although illegal) can be easily purchased on the internet. Just about anyone with $20 and a car cigarette lighter can broadcast a conflicting signal. Jamming arbitrarily disrupts the GPS signal. But Cook says that the signals that are vital to the entire setup can easily be interrupted by “spoofing” or “jamming.” The satellites provide location and time information to receivers back on earth. GPS is a worldwide navigation and timing system that relies on radio signals from an array of 31 satellites. ![]() The issue prompted Cook to join the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, which advocates for a backup system to GPS. But according to experts, these mysterious outages are becoming more common - signs, they believe, of a growing problem of criminal interference with the world’s most critical navigation and timing system.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |