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U.S. Makes Plans for GPS Shutdown
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."
Both actions make GPS harder to use as a weapon by our enemies.
It can always be turned back on when the threat has passed, or selectively turned on at specific times to allow for a strategic response.
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
What is ironic about controlling when your technology can and cannot be used. It seems like a system for shutting it down when necessary would go hand in hand with a system for making sure other's can't shut it down arbitrarily.
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They seemed to locate everything just fine on 9/11 w/o any GPS...
In the event of a terroist attack, cause large scale panic by shutting down a primary means of navigation.
What's next? Cutting off electricity so that the terrorists can't use it against people?
Instead of disabling portions of it, why not just give it a rolling encryption that the terrorists cannot decipher for a period of time greater than the duration of the attack? With our troops and weaponry increasingly dependent on the technology, the outcome could be much worse for us in that we could be left completely unable to respond to the attack. If we're going to think ahead, then let's really think about it!
"Can there be a Klein bottle that is an efficient and effective beer pitcher?"
Isn't GPS used to navigate ships and planes all over the world? Are they going to take the blame if they disable the GPS network, and an oil tanker runs aground, or a plane crashes? I think there's probably a lot of pilots out there would couldn't navigate if it weren't for their GPS.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Mostly terrorist attacks occur quickly and without warning, and by the time the authorities gets a clue about what is going on, the attack most likely is over - as per 9/11. Shutting down the GPS network in such an event would only make it infinitely harder for rescue workers and police to coordinate relief efforts.
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.
The ability to selectively disable the network has long been a feature though usually it's spoken of in terms of disabling it over a (non-USA) battlefield. The govt. would be stupid to do this in all but the most serious emergency and then only for the shortest possible time.
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?
It makes no mention of "how" they plan to do this. The mechanism could easily be simply to contact the EU, and, if neccesary present evidence that there will be a terrorist attack.
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.
Attempting to disable Galileo/GLONASS when the EU or Russia is not attacking might be considered a hostile act.
So a "terrorist" attacks the US, and we respond by stranding millions of drivers, hikers, travellers and emergency workers without their GPS to help them get to safety. SUDDENLY AND WITHOUT WARNING. Isn't this GPS shutdown Osama's dream come true? What else can this criminal asshole do to fan the flames of fear and destroy our country?
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make install -not war
What about all the other users? Ships and aircraft which may be relying on it? Public road users trying to find their way home? Its just asking to get more people pissed off with the US.. particularly since this system will block others systems like Galileo without permission..
<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>
Range Voting: preference intensity matters
What about the required integration of E911 & AGPS?
Wouldn't this affect the usability of this?
Just in case you need to know. Plans usually include things such as:
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.
Get a free ipod.
I think that a couple of hundred thousand people in the skies in planes that no longer know where they are may well get very pissed off... And personally, I DO care what happens to them...
The poster was probably referring to Selective Availability (SA), an intentional degradation of GPS accuracy. Military-issue GPS devices could correct for the inaccuracy, but civilian units could not - although the military would publish "correction" factors two weeks later, so people using GPS for things such as offshore seismic surveys could get more accurate positions after the fact.
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.
This is a just a plan folks. It's like posting an article stating that the government has a plan to shoot down commercial airliners that have been hijacked and are heading for large population centers, and the responses here would be "What is the government going to randomly shoot down airplanes now? I hate the government. Don't they know that foreigners fly on those planes, that could be an act of war? Air travel is a major commercial enterprise, is anyone thinking about how this could criple the economy? Sometimes they transport organs for transplant on those planes, just think about the people who would die? I love those little jet trails in the sky, why does the government want to take them away from me? Has anyone thought about the children? The children!" Stop overreacting, RTFA, and realize IT IS JUST A PLAN. This is what government bureaucracies do... they create massive amounts of paper.
...shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only the most remarkable circumstances
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.
GPS, yes. Galileo, no.
It's pretty easy to knock together 1, 10's, 100's, 1000's of GPS guided, lawn mower engine powered, airplanes. The OMC 6.5HP two-stroke is an easy conversion and cheap. Excluding labor, a SWARM of GPS guided planes could be assembled for under $2000 each in small quantities. For quantities in the thousands, it's a contract job in HK, Taiwan, or China. A few hundread people could launch thousands of these in less than an hour. All that's lacking is an adequately terrifying payload.
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!
> 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.
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".
One could just follow the road and, say, go by signs and a map
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.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Yes, you do, because that's way more important to the US than the impact of a terrorist attack. You need to have friends if you want a healthy economy, and a healthy economy is of much bigger importance on the average person's life than preventing terrorism.
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.
History has taught the rest of us that the U.S. will do anything it sees fit, with or without permission.
I can't imagine its too difficult to find the two tallest buildings in NYC without GPS.
This is not the sig you are looking for...
Public safety agencies rely increasingly upon GPS-based vehicle tracking -- in fact, federal authorities tended to encourage this in the weeks after 9/11/2001 with their hightened concerns about the possibilites that terrorists could steal emergency vehicles and use them as weapons. Moreover, Phase II Wireless 9-1-1 systems have been developed around the principle that metdata from GPS-enabled mobile handsets would help guide rescuers to those who need help. It seems to me that if the terrorists were to succeed in getting us to take down our GPS system, it could actually *produce* chaos and casualties over and above those that might be inflicted directly by an attack.
...disavow all knowledge...
And how is shutting down GPS going to prevent a suitcase nuke attack?
What do you mean our enemies? I dont have any enemies. Who is it exactly that is your enemy anyway? Are they your enemy because Rumsfield told you so?
The whole US/THEM mentality is such a sad dementia. When will people learn? Its just people trying to get by.
Stop being so dramatic, there has been 1 terrorist attack on the US, Boo-fucking-Hoo, now it's suddenly the biggest problem in the world ?
... the list goes on.
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.
By the time they get authorization to shut down GPS, the attack will most likely already be over.
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?
that's what powerful countries do, what is the alternative?
Humility?
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...
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
It would be cheaper, and more polite, to ASK the EU to shut down gallileo when required rather than blunder in and interfere with us. As we're ostensibly on the same side in this 'war on terror' we're unlikely to say no. But thick headed ' me and only me' options are why we Europeans don't like you sometimes, and mean that you will destroy a perfectly good relationship with us. then we may well make plans that place you against us.
How many attacks have US actions after 9/11 prevented?
No. DGPS uses land-based antennas.
i al 1of2.html
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
Frankly, I'm surprised this is "new."
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If the US openly state that they have controls to shut down both GPS and Galileo, won't that make the services less interesting for time-critical services (like ambulances and firemen) to use?
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.
I hate to tell you this, but no matter how much you spend you cannot stop them. You can catch them many times but some will eventually get through. There have been terrorist attacks planned for the US long before Bush took office that were stopped. These people have no problem sacrificing their lives for their cause. People like that are difficult to stop and over time they have gotten more sophisticated with their techniques to avoid capture.
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.
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.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If empire were an American desire Europe would have went through being territories all the way to US states by now.
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.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Nope, we know who has it right and reelected him. The War against Islamic Fundamentalism is the number one priority for our generation and Bush understands that. You and Kerry don't believe that, and were rejected for it. History will prove one our views correct, the question is whether those histories will be written in English or Arabic.
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.
Remember that after WWII we stood astride the world with a war machine unmatched in history, totally unopposed by the shattered remains of the rest of the civilized world, in sole possession of the Ultimate Weapon. What did we do? Taxed ourselves to rebuild not only our wartorn allies, but also our defeated enemies.
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.
The enemies of Democracy are
not only this, but don't a lot of cell phones use GPS to send location data in the event of a 911 call? my verizon phone has some little splash screen that says aGPS when it starts up, and a friend of mine has a nextel phone with GPS on it. so, in the event of a terrorist attack, lots of people are getting hurt and killed, and in the age of cellphones, the rescue squads can't find them.
great!
Or, more simply put:
"They hate us for our Freedom."
"Only a Terrorist has use for Civil Liberties"
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
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...