U.S. Lifts Ban On Private Use of GPS

[webmaster]

An intersting article I came across on the website www.space.com, covering the lifting of the ban on private use of GPS yesterday...

Excerpted from: http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/business/gps_ban_lifted_000501.html

quote:
The United States has dropped its ban on the civilian use of a highly accurate satellite-navigation system, a decision which could spur commercial use.

Starting Tuesday at midnight Greenwich Mean Time (Monday, 8 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time) the Pentagon will "deactivate" its exclusive use of the Global Positioning System (GPS), allowing anyone already owning a GPS device to locate their bearings to within 60 feet (20 meters).
...

"This increase in accuracy will allow new GPS applications to emerge and continue to enhance the lives of people around the world," Clinton said.

...

The current restrictions have limited civilians and non-defense agencies to locate their position to within 300 feet (100 meters), making the new improvement "instantly" 10 times better, said the president's science advisor, Neil Lane, at a White House briefing.

The U.S. Defense Department will retain the ability to block an enemy country or region from using the more accurate system, said Assistant Secretary of Defense Arthur Money at a White House briefing. The system is free to anyone worldwide, "unless we're in a conflict somewhere," he said, in which case the military could "counter" an enemy's use.

...



While I agree that the benefits of the a "new" more accurate GPS system will be be applauded by aviators, sailors and even hikers... I just wonder at what malevolent purposes this new 10 fold increase in accuracy could be used for. I won't continue that traing of thought, but definitely has me "wondering"....

But also, this has the potentional for extreme benefits for the Aviation community. Better approaches/departures, point to point navigation, and of course airspace management and traffic seperation.

Already (as I experienced on my cross country while in a GPS equipped plane) you have Approach clearing you direct to your destination when your still 200 miles out! I guess this is evidence of the slow possible demise of airways and jet routes, to an eventual shift to GPS direct to destination? Who knows, I am still quite new to this aviation thing, but it seems to me that there is some serious change heading towards the aviation community.

 

[OracleMSU]

Actually, we wont have to worry about being tracked via GPS. It is a totally passive system, where the receiver doesn't send any information. The satellites are armed with redundant nuclear clocks and all they do is send out time information, and from that, the receiver is able to calculate its position in three space as long as it can recieve the signal from 4 satellites. It can get 2 dimentions from 3 satellites, and so forth. SO, unless your badge were equiped with a transmitter, which would not be related to GPS, then you are safe. Touching on the whole worries thing, I would be worried too.
As a computer science student with knowledge on how to build model rockets, I could probably write a program to input information into wings to make it navigate to a point, have done a similar thing with binary search algorithms. SO, the threat is real, but it isn't cheap.

But as far as us being tracked by GPS, it would require different equipment than the existing satellites.

Now, all of the above depends on the fact that the gov't doesn't lie to us on how they work. All I know is that the GPS receiver I have doesn't transmit anything.

Heh, so those are my two cents. Don't spend them all in one place.



-----OracleMSU----------
"Give me ambiguity or give me something else."

 

[Tripp]

A little insight from my experiences in civil aviation...

With the advent of GPS (and it truly is a wonderful piece of work...), basic pilotage and dead-reckoning skills are going down the tubes. With a little "turtle" (remember the Commodore 64?!?!?!?!) hovering over you exact position on a nice little LCD screen, why would you need them? I wonder how many people get lost because they were using GPS (lest we forget our comrades-in-arms in fly-by-wire aircraft, computers crash occasionally...). What happens if you have a total electrical failure, hmm? No comm, no GPS. Just you, your compass, your sectional chart, and your E-6B...

Anyways, GPS is great, but don't check your brain at the door...