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Europe Building Their Own GPS
An anonymous reader writes "BBC News is reporting that Europe is planning to build their own satellite-navigation network that will be backward and forward compatible. There's going to be 5 levels ranging from free (1m accuracy) to commercial (1cm accuracy)! Provision is also being made for a search and rescue mode where a signal can be sent to confirm that help is on the way. The system will supposedly even work with existing US network after upgrades to the network."
After many years of trying to convince europe its unnecessary, the US still reserves the right to shoot the satellites down if it wants http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=vie wArticle&code=20041026&articleId=557
Reading the frelling article, I don't see what keeps anyone from hacking and getting the 'commercial-grade' service. What sort of blocks are there? Will this be like DirecTV which becomes very easily decodeable after a few years and millions of deployments, or will this be like some of the military satellite signals whose keys change every day?
We've known about this for at least a year...
do people not remember the bush administration threatening to use anti-satellite weapons unless europe gave the US the power to interfere with it, jam the satellites and/or switch them off or to a lower resolution mode for certain areas of the globe which they were fighting in?
The United States is going to perceive this as a military move. Or, at least, extreme reactionary war-hawk conservatives will. (i.e. the sorts of people who label all of Europe as Socialist or call Europeans "EUroweenies").
Ahh, a cloud chock-full of silver linings...
Seriously, would the US want to rely on a navigation service controlled by France, with the express ability to shut it off at any time for any reason they want? Why expect Europe to accept such a situation?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Not only is this a dupe, but I think it is one several times over and also several years old. BTW, if the EU wants to spend billions on a duplicate navigation system, all for the good. I will have a more accurate and more redundant nav system paid for by SOMEONE ELSE for once. Thanks!
Doesn't anyone else see why this would be useful to the Police when they're passively monitoring EVERY VEHICLE?
1 59244&tid=158&tid=219 if you don't remember!!
See http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/11/15/2
I wonder if its worth building a GPS Spoofer like the one on http://gps.hackaday.com/entry/1234000843061178/
DugUK
There has been a lot of comment about how to pull that off with the limitations of the current GPS.
This new system will in my opinion be designed to have features to support this.
Should haves:
Double blind identification. Your receiver in your car will not be personally identifiable.
Works better in cities with tall buildings
Better accuracy
European control.
Nice to haves:
Downloadable content:
- Congestion alerts
- Emergency Warnings a la radio interupt
A government certified connection signal that must be displayed when they ARE tracking you.
Triangulation compensation with terrestrial mobile masts. If we're gonna have big brother, why not make it accurate?
My 2p.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
True, HOW DARE WE build our own GPS system. How did Europe get permissions from the mighty USA to do this?! This is madness. Will the USA now see Europe as trying to undermine its pure monopoly on guidance systems and attempt to invade? God forbid that American "doesnt like it", imagine what that could entail?!?!!?
and terrorists. What, exactly, could a terrorist do with GPS technology? They don't have access to cruise missiles or ICBMs. I can understand degrading GPS signals when facing a standing army equally equipped, but I just don't see how even marginally accurate GPS could help a terrorist.
If a terrorist wanted to find the locations of water facilities, nuclear power generating plants or other critical infrastructure they would need to find it by other means before GPS would be useful (if GPS would be useful at all).
About the only way GPS would help a terrorist is to save him the $5 locals want to charge for directions to Staples Center in Los Angeles when you're already across the street from it (don't ask).
Honestly, though. The only scenario that occurs to me where GPS might be critical to a terrorist attempt would be a proximity based bomb using GPS technology to identify the proximity to a target.
Anyone have other ideas (and keep your eyes peeled for Staples Center)?
Given that a GPS guided smart-bomb is only as accurate as the GPS signal, do the folks in Paris, France, or {name your own favorite freedom-allied European municipality and country} really want to give another foreign and presumably malignant military power the ability to bomb down to one meter accuracy? Talk about the ultimate terror weapon "country X, give up ________ or our GPS guided weapon will hit elementary school Y", etc., etc.
Somehow I don't think that the free world --or even the non-free countries of the world, for that matter -- has much worry that the US military is going to ever do or be allowed to do something like that, do you?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
So now I can track all of the people over in Europe too?
--
Get your Free MacMini here
But anyone tracking both L1 and L2 can get that kind of accuracy today with GPS.
This is a fix for a problems which doesn't exist.
I dub thee... Sir Phobos, Knight of Mars, Beater of Ass.
Not only does this allow the US to jam the Galileo frequencies without taking out GPS, it lets the EU jam GPS without taking out Galileo.
Galileo is still in development, and I suspect that those un-jammable modifications to GPS will find their way into Galileo's (currently technically superior) technology. The whole thing will prompt another arms race with more and more satellites of higher accuracy until the whole thing is an esentially unjammable mess.
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
"We could unleash our nuclear arsenal and flatten Europe."
Well, your post (and others) actually makes it very clear that americans are still scary people and that we should build our own positioning system.
Will code a sig generator for food
I am sure you have a demonstration at hand, so I shall wait for it. As a european, I have grown accustomed to people telling us that free trade was the solution for us, while taking severe protectionist measures from their own side, Japan and USA included. "Do what I say, not what I do !" ?
Both would come crashing down. I'll assume you're European, so let me ask, why do you get off so hard fantasizing about screwing the US?
Who cares about that ? We are just looking to protect our own interests. Dosn't everybody ?
You can't do it, just as much as we can't do it to you.
Well, that has been done with steel and foie gras, just to qote these two examples. Don't you agree ?
Now let me point out your rampant unemployment, over 8% is it?
Yes. Which is what you has, as far as I remember, at the beginning of the Reagan era. Unemployment rate come and go, and buying things elsewhere while selling one's capital (and/or making a huge debt, which is not very different) rather than employing one's own people can hardly be described as a good solution, or even as a solution at all.
So much for planned economies, huh?
I spent 25 years in a multinational corporation, and while I hate to deprive peoiple of their illusions, I have to inform you that none of them works withour not one, but two plans : a short-term (2 years sliding) plan and a strategic (5-year sliding) plan. As theses corporations are slightly taking the world over (I guess you saw the movie "The corporation"), we shoud assume that planned economy is efficient, when it occurs in a strongly darwinian world.
I'm an American
I guess you mean that you are a US citizen. "American" would refer as well to Canadians, Mexicans, Bresilian, people from Argentina and so on)
and have nothing against the EU nor its citizens, and I think that's the sentiment of most of our population here (I even invest in your markets!)
Join the club ;-) So do I (and in fact it does not mean much to say that a Corporation belong to one continent or another. Sooner or later, it will flee where the taxes are smallest, anyway). I am rather gald at the way Air Liquide has been performing in the last 30 years.
The anti-American attitude coming out of Europe, though, is sickening.
I shall not enter this arrière-garde fight. Please read "The Economist" of this week (Christmas special), and everything you could say and I could answer is already in it, pages 41-43. Thank you.
You need us as much as we need you
But you just do NOT need us. When there was no much cross-border trade between continental Europe and the USA, not only did the USA survive, but they got finally out of their crisis, remember. The only thing that is needed is international cooperation to achieve the right momentum for big investment, no matter with whom. Presently, the cash is in China, and the only reason we are not dealing only with them is their poor management, to say the least, of human rights. On this point, I a pretty sure you will agree this is a valuable reason.
Signature omitted in order to save space. Thanks for your understanding.
This is really old news and extremely complex. The galileo/GPS compatibility was negotiated between the EU and the US State Department over a very long period. The EU deliberately picked an incompatible code to force concessions from the US before the EU consented and went with the better frequency.
This is a great example of technology driven politics.
--Keith
You may like to accept the degraded (or non existent signal) if the US turns it off, but pilots aren't. Already, there are plans in the US to get rid of most ground-based navaids. Currently, in Europe, GPS is not valid for IFR (instrument flight rules) navigation, because no European country has any kind of guarantee on quality-of-service. It wouldn't be too great, for example, if you were on an instrument approach and >poof, GPS is degraded or turned off just when you really really need sub 5-meter accuracy. Until Europe has its own satellite navigation system, its commercial airlines and private aircraft must rely on many expensive and inaccurate ground-based navaids (for example, you still need an ADF receiver - truly pre-historic, inadequate and inaccurate - to fly IFR in Europe).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
"Tell me thats not a concession to a party unrelated to the project? "
I know you Europeans have totally forgotten, but we're actually a non-inconsquential military ally of yours. It's called NATO. The US is hardly a third party to all of this.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Seems like this is being spun as a way for the U.S. to jam their signal without affecting their own... couldn't they jam the U.S. signal without affecting theirs?
The US vs Europe debate fails to notice that there exists an
operational alternative to the US GPS system. Russia has had a
working system for years. There are shipping chipsets that do both
GPS and GLONASS.
http://www.glonass-center.ru/
Europe should just slip the Russians a few Euro to keep it running
and get a contractual agreement on levels of service.