Secret UK Network Hunts GPS Jammers

garymortimer writes "A secret network of 20 roadside listening stations across the UK has confirmed that criminals are attempting to jam GPS signals on a regular basis. From the article: 'Government-funded trials involving the police have revealed more than a hundred incidents of GPS jammer use in the UK. The Sentinel project, which has been running since January 2011, was designed to measure GPS jamming on UK roads. The project, run by GPS-tracking company Chronos Technology, picked up the illegal jamming incidents via four GPS sensors in trials lasting from two to six months per location.'"

Comments

at the risk of sounding stupid..

[neokushan]

Why block GPS? What do criminals gain from it? Genuine Queston.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[Tarmas]

FTFA:

"People illegally jam GPS for a number of reasons, Curry told the audience at the conference at the National Physical Laboratory. These include evasion of company-vehicle or covert tracking, and stealing high-value vehicles."

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Redirect a GPS equipped armored car to your secret criminal location and land it safely. Just like the Iranians did with the drone.

In old movies, criminals used fake "Detour" signs to re-route trucks carrying loot. Criminals are just getting high-tech savvy.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[Duncan Booth]

Possible but unlikely. I think at the moment they are just jamming the GPS signal which is really easy to do. To redirect you to another location they have to provide fake signals that your receiver will think are real. You can do that but it requires more sophisticated equipment. New Scientist had an article about GPS jamming last year and one of the more interesting things they suggested was that if you could distort the GPS instead of just jamming it you could cause mains blackouts over large areas of the US. Apparently US power stations use GPS as the reference time signal to ensure that the different power stations keep their generators in phase, so knock a few of them half a cycle out of phase and the entire network could come down.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[lightknight]

Honestly? The LEOs of today, based off of what limited information I have gathered, pale somewhat in comparison with the LEOs of yesteryear. That is to say the quality has dropped a fair amount with regards to the new recruits. Now, it's possible that the quality has remained the same, and it's only with the advent of new technology (cellphone cameras) are we finding out just how poor that quality has been all along...however, there are some limited indicators which suggest it may have been, on average, better at some point in the past.

Investigators who need information spoon-fed to them, troopers who need to be constantly reminded of the laws they are supposed to be upholding...it's pretty bad.

How does this relate to GPS? Well, as I outlined in a post a while back, officers are more reliant on technology today than times past. Mind you, I said reliant, not augmented by. As such, a typical officer cannot be guaranteed to actually memorize the various roads and streets that make up their own town / city, let alone the surrounding towns / cities. So, if you manage to knock out their GPS navigation systems, it's possible that they will not be able to find a route, let alone a quick one, to the scene of the crime nor plot an intercept course to pursue a suspect if he / she is still at large.

If you pair up GPS jammers in concert with radio jammers, you can prevent officers from being notified about a crime in progress, as well as prevent them from finding their way to the scene (thus buying yourself time) is they manage to get around that (by using their cellphones or something more creative). In the event of a chase, officers typically need some level of communication to box-in a suspect (to get a car on either side, one in back, one in front, to force you to slow down). And so on.

Since this is taking place in the UK, it could be a prelude to something 'interesting': rolling with the cliches here, someone planning a bank heist or to swipe the crown jewels. Or not: it could easily be a broken device broadcasting on the wrong channel, with the owner unaware; a broken CB radio in California once overpowered cellphones in the surrounding area, and no criminal intent was found. Or a prank.

 

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[queBurro]

[Meaconing](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaconing) the GPS signal using the encoder, (and...) sending the British frigate HMS Devonshire off-course in the South China Sea

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[Anonymous Coward]

But that's just stupid! You don't have to invest in a GPS jammer, which is illegal probably in most places too. You can just wrap your whole care in tinfoil. TA-DA!

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[MichaelSmith]

evasion of company-vehicle or covert tracking

Yeah there is a scandal here in Australia at the moment with a trucking company disabling speed limiters. Corrupting GPS trace information would be the other half of the picture.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[oobayly]

I remember this being in the news, it nearly started a war. Luckily some English chap and a Chinese bird managed to stop Rupert Murdock before it was too late.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[billcopc]

Depends on your definition of "criminal".

GPS navigation is generally a good thing. GPS tracking is a slippery thing, seen by some as an invasion of privacy. The vehicle owner should be entitled to know where their property is, but it is none of their business where I go and what I do during the day. Insurance companies would love to hike premiums based on where you park, where you eat, how many mistresses you entertain, or those brief stops in the seedy part of town.

I cannot speak for the UK, but in some parts of the world, you can get fined for speeding in a rental vehicle - by the rental company, not the police! I would gladly jam a device used to defraud me in such fashion. Traffic management is a police matter, not a private one.

On one hand, GPS tracking can help against theft, or at least facilitate recovery. On the other hand, it opens up a wealth of possibilities for abuse. The dilemma is in deciding if the pros outweigh the cons (no pun intended).

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[billcopc]

You must be new to America.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[Anonymous Coward]

I work for a telemetry company. Our units have a privacy mode the driver can activate when off duty.

GPS jamming is also only really going to hide location, since these units are connected to the vehicle's CANBUS so read engine rpm, wheel speed, crazy acceleration, braking, cornering etc. So when the jamming is removed, it will still report back you drove the company car 500 miles at an average wheel speed of 86mph, with peaks of 112.

Plus its blatantly obvious when the data stream stops due to comms failure.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[C0vardeAn0nim0]

that's a whole lot of bullshit right there.

i know wikipedia is not a reliable source for any argumentation, but here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchroscope

this is what's in use on power grids all over the world since the concept of interconnected generators was invented.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[BlueStrat]

Why block GPS? What do criminals gain from it? Genuine Queston.

What I'm surprised by is the apparent lack of incidents involving criminals using broad-banded jammers to kill ALL radio-based communications in a certain area.

For instance, in the case of police conducting a taskforce drug-sweep through a gang-controlled neighborhood/apartment complex/etc, I could easily imagine the gang's lookouts giving the sign when the cops & SWAT starts to roll into the area, the gangsters then start up the jammers, killing all police radios as well as cell phones, GPS, and anything else depending on radio.

That would remove an absolutely enormous tactical advantage from the police if they are unable to call for assistance or relay information about suspect activities, whereabouts, direction of travel, or even that an officer (or many) has/have been shot and is/are bleeding out in the alley behind the target building while the suspects safely escape.

A mobile version in a criminal's vehicle would also be a great help in losing or ambushing pursuing officers.

As a former amateur radio operator and RF electronics technician, it really wouldn't take much in material costs to rig up a series of car battery powered broadband jammers able to block any radio or GPS use within a couple-block area. You could probably pick up everything one would need to construct such a jamming system for less than a couple hundred dollars (depending on your haggling skills) from the typical amateur radio "hamfest" used electronics buy/sell/trade event and not leave a paper trail.

Now, THAT should send chills down LE spines! Without his/her radio/cellphone, a cop is just another asshole with a gun, and dies just as easily. Hopefully, the uniforms and shiny bits should make them stand out and easily enough sorted from bystanders by the gang's snipers to avoid most collateral casualties.

Hmm. Maybe I should work up some schematic drawings and layouts, and post them online if I get some spare time. I wonder if DHS/ICE would have the drawings taken off the 'net?

Strat

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a Protection Engineer. We have GPS at every substation in order to timestamp, down to the millisecond, faults. Helps us determine where the fault started, who tripped first, etc. It's a protection coordination thing. It's also required for Synchrophasors, which is a way to monitor power flows, system stability, and system disturbances at a very fine level. When you have several readings coming in from geographically spread out locations, all with the same down-to-the-millisecond timestamp, you can get a good feel on how the transmission grid is performing.

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[deek]

Jammed? Raspberry! There's only one man who would dare give me Raspberry. CowboyNeal !

Re:at the risk of sounding stupid..

[Ihmhi]

The mistake you make is thinking that such an intelligent idea would be used by a group of people who think that holding a handgun sideways is a good thing.

Misleading Article

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not criminals blocking GPS it's blokes in trucks that don't want their bosses to know where they are and how fast they are going.

Most UK fleets operate GPS tracking so they can schedule deliveries/keep tabs on driver behaviour, jamming the GPS allows that truck driver to exceed the speed limits, take unscheduled breaks, drive for longer periods of time and generally do things without his bosses knowing about it. In cab tachographs can be tampered with, GPS tracking done remotely cannot so the solution for them is to block the GPs signal.

Yes it's illegal to interfere with GPS but we are not talking about hardened criminals here, what purpose would jamming a GPS network in a range of 200 yards around your vehicle serve ?

Re:Misleading Article

[Dr_Barnowl]

what purpose would jamming a GPS network in a range of 200 yards around your vehicle serve

Part of me thinks the enforcement of this is a prelude to the coming age where our vehicle positions are all tracked ; that isn't tinfoil hat territory, it's a serious proposition that has been raised by the government of the UK amongst others in Europe. I'm firmly convinced that this is one of the major justifications for the new Galileo navigation satellite constellation - it's been designed to work much better in the kind of convoluted urban environment common in European cities.

The legislative justification is "road pricing" - the idea being ostensibly to reduce congestion on busy roads at rush hour by charging higher tolls for them, all enforced by an on-board GPS / Galileo datalogger with a cellular modem. Since a back-of-the-napkin calculation can tell you that it's an order of magnitude cheaper to toll roads by mandating active RFID tags in license plates, Occam's Razor says that road pricing is not the real aim of fitting every vehicle with a tracking device.

Quite apart from the current reasons for enforcing a ban on GPS jammers (interference with airport GPS equipment, etc), they have a vested interest in not letting these devices become common enough to render them effectively impossible to police.

Re:Is it illegal yet?

[slimjim8094]

I can't speak for the UK, but it is absolutely illegal in the US. I'd go as far as say it's one of the most illegal things you could do with radio, in that it's about the most egregious use of deliberate "harmful interference" around. It would be illegal if they were trying to block Joe Frank's Tree Service walkie-talkies, but GPS is very highly used, very highly depended on, and not only governmental but military. Anybody doing serious GPS jamming effective over a few miles would be found in an hour - probably less. Seriously, the military invented it to know where they were. Planes use it to land (not without fallbacks...). I wouldn't screw around with it if I were trying to stay quiet, because you'll get a lot of guys that are a lot smarter and a lot more serious than the local PD on your tail in a hurry.

Re:Not that much of a stretch, really...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you consider that a criminal will also monitor police radios as well.

UK
Google TETRA, or Terrestrial Trunked Radio..
Ain't that easy anymore....

Re:OT: What's with all the hyperbol summaries late

[slimjim8094]

Paranoid much?

In any case, the entire reason we have the FCC is precisely because you don't get to decide how other people use radio. You're not allowed to jam GPS because you don't like it. That would be like shooting down a plane because it flew over your house.

Sure, if you wanted to jam GPS for a 20 foot radius, people probably won't notice. But GPS is a global system of great importance - planes can use it to navigate, not to mention millions of people just trying to make it to their relatives' houses, or find the nearest pizza place. Not to mention, it's military. They'd have something to say about your "I'll block GPS!" plan, I'm sure.

But let's accept the premise. Let's say for the benefit of the doubt that you didn't know the sorts of things GPS is actually used for. Can I jam the police frequency so they can't operate near my house? "Fuck da police" doesn't count. How about the fire department? ATC communications? Hospital pagers? WiFi? The local radio station while it's airing Rush Limbaugh, because I don't like him?

Most radio is licensed, including GPS. You have to abide by rules to use a licensed service, but it grants you protection from interference. You as an individual don't get to decide that this particular licensed service can just be interfered with because it pisses you off.

Trucker disrupts air control tower

[abelb]

As mentioned above truckers, delivery van drivers etc can use jammers to hide thier location inadvertantly disrupting critical systems.
"An event last year at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey showed that it only takes one jammer to cause disruption. Airport controllers had installed a new GPS-based landing system, so that aircraft could approach in bad visibility. But it was shutting itself down once or twice a day. It took several months to find the culprit: a driver on the nearby New Jersey Turnpike using a portable GPS jammer to avoid paying the highway toll."

Re:OT: What's with all the hyperbol summaries late

[Feefers]

Besides we don't need GPS, we can use the vast CCTV network to track you far better.

Re:Not that much of a stretch, really...

[Electricity Likes Me]

"Criminals" aren't attempting anything.

Random kids who wonder about signal jamming are looking up the plans online and testing out just how easy it is to do.

Re:GLONASS

[MartinSchou]

GLONASS is different from GPS in more than just frequency - each satellite has its own specific frequency.

One of the advantages to this over GPS is that atmospheric disturbances are much easier to cancel out. Might make it harder to jam as well, as you'd need a broader spectrum, but I don't know.

One disadvantage is, of course, that your receivers have to be able to pick up multiple frequencies.