Out in Front: Ready, Aim, Shoot Foot

May 1, 2009 By: Alan Cameron GPS World

The GPS community carries around a loaded weapon, seemingly unconcerned with figuring out how to put a safety on it. This is a catastrophe waiting to happen, one that could hobble the industry.

Equipment to interfere with the GPS signal is readily available over the Internet, as are instructions to bench-assemble one’s own. We have not adequately foreseen nor forestalled the havoc that some well-placed malfeasance could create.

Putting aside for a moment images of the wreckage, consider the after-effects, when Congress and/or other government bodies finally wake up to how vulnerable GPS and GPS-driven infrastructure truly are, and move to regulate or restrict its use. This could stifle the industry that has grown, so far, largely unfettered. Consider a public backlash that, misunderstanding, blames GPS and manufacturers for such a disaster.

Don’t discount the likelihood of attack, or slew of attacks. The most interest ever logged by this magazine’s website followed a July 2008 suite of news stories on jamming, inexpensive blockers, the FCC, and countermeasures, which in turn referenced the June “Innovation” column on receiver techniques for detecting radio-frequency interference. Someone posted and commented on the stories in the techie blogosphere at slashdot.org (“News for Nerds”), and our site traffic rose up out of the noise floor, punctured the seat of my chair, and went rocketing through the roof. As the contributor who brought it to our attention commented, “You have hit the big time in geek cyberspace.”

There’s a lot of interest out there — most of it probably in tinkering, or in toying with the possibility of tinkering — but hidden in the crowd run others more sinister. As gun-control opponents like to say, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” Be that as it may, we shouldn’t just throw our hands in the air.

Recognize that GNSS interference is a very real possibility. There are things we can do for the user equipment and for the signals to reduce the scope and probability of interference impact. The techniques for accommplising this have been investigated and proven. What’s lacking so far is the will to implement them.

If the industry and the various user communities, all of whom have a very strong, vested self-interest in continued GNSS use and growth, started to push system providers to take positive, proactive steps, it would make a big difference for everyone.

It has become both a paradox and a paradigm of our times, that technology intertwines so tightly, so symbiotically into our daily lives that we need more technology to control it.

Shades of I, Robot.

Prove Me Wrong

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