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GPS Jamming for $50
Anonymous writes "One of the newest hacker tools out there is a homemade GPS jammer. According to this article in Computerworld, such jammers can be built with $50 worth of electrical parts. Phrack has published a how-to aimed at inexpensive GPS-based navigation and "hidden tracking devices.""
It is explicitely illegal for pilots to rely on GPS for navigation. Of the several types of navigation you learn when you earn your pilots license, GPS is not one of them. Even if a (assumed general aviation) pilot was breaking the rules and relying solely on GPS for navigation, its not like the GPS begin jammed would suddenly screw him. He can always go back to the more reliable methods, including the tried and true "looking out the window".
:P
To be effective, GPS jamming would have to have a range of at least 20 miles, which would be a signal that would be quite easy to track down and stop.
Who else uses jamming? The military can use it, but again, its not like jamming is going to do much because missles can be targeted at the jammers.
Hikers could be screwed I suppose, but few hikers rely on GPS for their lives.
GPS Lo-Jacks could be disabled, but activating a GPS jammer would be like turning on a huge beacon pointing straight to the thief anyway.
Street-map GPSs could be disabled, but given their accuracy, most people wouldnt even notice
I am so sick of hearing about the benefits of cell phone jammers, I just had to respond to this.
What if they were legal? You could bring one to the movie theater, whee! Would you be happy? Perhaps, but only until you'd discover that someone thinks talking on the street is impolite. Or notice that a customer of your favorite bar doesn't like them.
If jammers were used commonly, the only place you'd be able to make calls without the fear of jamming would be from within your own home. Which kinda defeats their whole purpose, doesn't it?
Jammers are evil. Period.
Not to mention what I think of limiting the options of polite moviegoers just to deter impolite people. It is analogous to what the RIAA is doing to honest customers in order to fight piracy, and no one here seems to agree with that. Hypocrites...
My Sig: SEGV
There are minimal benefits (none come immediately to mind) but the fact is they would land you in a world of litigation. Who wants to be sued by everyone who couldn't get thru to emergency services on their cell phone for the entire period they owned a cell jammer. Cause they would, and the shitty court system here in America would find in their favor cause you couldn't prove you never used it. And that's after you've been found guilty of negligent manslaughter in those same cases for the same reason. IANAL, but this is what i would imagine happening. If the feds didn't decide to take you away as a terrorist, cause only terrorists would want to use jamming technology (for those of you who can't see it, that was sarcasm in that last line)