I wish there were cheap Bluetooth jammers to prevent speakers from playing when hiking
Where do you hike where it’s a problem? I mean if I meet perhaps 10 people max over 2 hours. If all of them were blasting music it still wouldn’t worry me at all.
Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
121–130 of 243 posts
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#122Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's always existed with Hidden SSID. If you are particularly paranoid you can set it up like that. But unless you insert personally identifiable info in your wifi name there is not really any privacy risk for this data being mapped.
> That's always existed with Hidden SSID. If you are particularly paranoid you can set it up like that. It's actually the opposite, a hidden SSID will backfire and hurt your privacy when it comes to phones and laptops. With a normal network, your phone can passively listen for when it approaches MyHomeNetwork and then connect. If you change that to a 802.11 hidden SSID, then whenever you aren't connected your phone w…
These are valid points, but I think the utility of being able to get location on your phone without power sucking GPS running all day is greater than the privacy risk of seeing when a wifi AP moved address. Which if you were so inclined, could be avoided by changing the wifi name each move.
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
GPS jamming is fairly detectable right? I wonder if we could create some crowd souced map of jammers. I think this kind of already exists as fairly course data but if a bunch of people installed fixed GPS sensors at home and wired them up to note every time their location lock is lost or moves. It could create a hyper detailed map of where the jammers are and track them moving in realtime.
They're easy to find, but not necessarily with stuff from off the shelf. Professionals with the right equipment though have no trouble locating them. The FCC is happy to hand out 5 and 6 digit fines for operating a GPS jammer and has fined retailers tens of millions for selling them.
If you wanted to exactly pinpoint it with a single device sure, but I'm thinking of a map where nodes just report that they are experiencing jamming, and then with the whole network you can see a radius of the jam, see it moving around, and assume it's somewhere in the center. All with cheap off the shelf hardware.
The police could probably combine this data with license plate scanners and see the single truck that always exists in the jammed location.
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#124Aren’t most modern receivers multi-constellation? What is the technical feasibility of jamming every GNSS provider?
They all within same close tied frequency range, so it’s pretty easy. Though L1,L2,L5 need separate jammers if you only target GNSS
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would be curious on and interested in guidance from a GNSS expert on what the risk profile is when you're using jam resistant frequencies with a multi GNSS constellation chipset (GPS, Galileo, BeiDou), WAAS (GNSS corrections received via satellite), and when close enough to airports that support it, LAAS (GNSS corrections broadcast from airports). Follow up questions would be what countermeasures are available to b…
Because GPS and other GNSS have only a very weak signal strength there are no jam resistant frequencies, you can jam them all very efficiently, or you can jam them very efficiently in selective way (jam BeiDou, but not GPS). GPS was jammed even as early as Iraq war. "Coalition troops also got a glimpse of GPS’s greatest weakness during the Gulf War. Iraqi forces installed jammers, for example, on top of landmarks suc…
I think Starshield (Starlink for the military) is going to use lasers as the means of communication (and location). Those are highly directionaly, and likely not possible to jam. Though I'm not sure how resistant are they to atmospheric interference, and the sats need to know where your receivers are, which I can't imagine the military is too happy about.
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems like we'd need a modern version that's less susceptible to jamming, otherwise aren't we just replacing one jammable service with another?
There are two types of GPS jamming. There's GPS jamming by the military, mostly in war zones. This seldom effects airliners because they steer clear of active war zones. Then there's GPS jamming by delivery drivers who don't want their boss watching over their shoulder all the time. When the article mentions jammers as small as a cellphone and costing less than $100, those are sold to drivers. Delivery drivers don't…
Antenna tech has moved way beyond what was possible in the days GPS was invented. Planar arrays and MIMO are ubiquitous and cheap.
These antennas have a very good idea of where the signal is coming from, due to delay measurements and can detect and filter ambient noise. They are super hard to jam. The reason why drones have become such a PITA is that these inexpensive antennas are very hard to defeat even with military jammers.
If this becomes a geniune need in the civilian sector, then I'm sure the tech is up to the challenge.
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two types of GPS jamming. There's GPS jamming by the military, mostly in war zones. This seldom effects airliners because they steer clear of active war zones. Then there's GPS jamming by delivery drivers who don't want their boss watching over their shoulder all the time. When the article mentions jammers as small as a cellphone and costing less than $100, those are sold to drivers. Delivery drivers don't…
GPS jamming is fairly detectable right? I wonder if we could create some crowd souced map of jammers. I think this kind of already exists as fairly course data but if a bunch of people installed fixed GPS sensors at home and wired them up to note every time their location lock is lost or moves. It could create a hyper detailed map of where the jammers are and track them moving in realtime.
> if a bunch of people installed fixed GPS sensors at home
Similar things already exist - although it's used for increasing GPS precision and detecting faulty satellites, moreso than detecting jamming, so the networks might not be dense enough to detect small areas of jamming.
For one state's example, see [1] - choose 'RINEX archives' if you want historical readings.
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are two types of GPS jamming. There's GPS jamming by the military, mostly in war zones. This seldom effects airliners because they steer clear of active war zones. Then there's GPS jamming by delivery drivers who don't want their boss watching over their shoulder all the time. When the article mentions jammers as small as a cellphone and costing less than $100, those are sold to drivers. Delivery drivers don't…
> boss watching over their shoulder all the time Sounds like the root cause to me. It should be illegal to use GNSS to track employees, or anyone really. Jamming is starting to sound a lot like self-defense against surveillance.
IMO tracking is just way too useful. You know when things are about to arrive (so you dont miss a parcel because you went to the toilet or you can even intercept your driver once he's in the area, removing most of the last-mile problem), routes can be changed on the fly (e.g. for on-demand public transport pickup, trunking or delay mitigation) or, well, you can track your vehicles, allowing you to find them quickly in case of theft, optimize routes or have decent evidence in case of disputes.
The real problem is not really drivers being tracked, but how the tracking data is or might be used. Timestamped delivery notifications might be just as bad in this regard.
As often, the solution is probably more about accessible and pro-human law. No idea how that should work, maybe certain sensitive data services having to be provided by a third party or even the government itself? There are probably much smarter ideas or variations of this...
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
> sustaining human life Not really. Drone ships are very much a thing these days.
How can a drone ship hold its designated position while it's blocking gps?
Shouldn't it be possible for you to reconstruct the original GPS signal if you can control the jamming pattern?
Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones
#130Whats really sad for aviation is there was already an extensive network of ground based navaids. As GPS has proliferated, they've slowly been decommissioned as they age out to save on cost. I'm specifically referring to VORs which provide azimuth and range to station. GPS is fantastic and as a primary source everyone loves the benefits it brings. However, in a century of aviation, everyone has kinda sorted out that y…
What about terrain following? I would guess decent topographical maps of the world aren't that hard to come by today, to get a good idea of where you are. Although that approach depends on you being able to see the ground neither of which is guaranteed over a body of water or in poor visibility.
Entirely possible and poor visibility is not an issue if you have radar.