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Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

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Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#211

Post by amelius »

buildsjets wrote: post #10
bronco21016 wrote: post #9

Whats 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…

VOR is extremely short range and requires an extraordinary number of transmitters to provide any volume of coverage. Additionally it cannot provide coverage over oceanic areas. We USED TO have a nearly global long-range land based navigation system called LORAN, which only required one master station and a few remote stations to provide continent-scale coverage. But it was decommissioned in a cost savings move after…

Was LORAN also resistant against jamming/hacking?

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#212

Post by Nifty3929 »

giantg2 wrote: post #173

This really shouldn't be a problem. We were lazy with GPS. Maps, compasses, altimeters, etc all still exist. They might not offer the same precision as GPS, but they can easily fill the gaps. We already have inertia guidance systems for munitions. That's pretty accurate and similar in theory.

One can navigate by stars as well, at least at night.

Really, all modern conveniences like grocery stores and plumbing are "unnecessary" in the sense that we survived for 100k years without them.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#213

Post by ryandrake »

Gigachad wrote: post #123
colechristensen wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

Here you go: https://gpsjam.org

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#214

Post by embedding-shape »

alightsoul wrote: post #199
embedding-shape wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These "solutions" always seem too broad with too much collateral damage. Would this be doable to do with a directional antenna or something instead, so you could aim at the specific speaker (in your own house) you want silenced?

You will need to use your own

Yeah, I didn't expect Bluetooth jamming to be available as SaaS exactly.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#216

Post by alightsoul »

alightsoul wrote: post #197
nerdsniper wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly you don’t have a family member who uses CGM’s. They are extremely sensitive to RF disruptions, and often fail for mind bogglingly dumb reasons. 2s on / 2s off would completely disable all of their functionality until the interference was gone. And possibly much longer - they are finicky.

This is such a first world problem. The speakers the post refers to are probably in a third world country where no medical equipment uses Bluetooth so jamming it poses no danger.

The reason why they don't use Bluetooth is because, they don't exist at all. People either die first before receiving the device, or the condition that requires it is rare in that part of the world

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#217

Post by Thorondor »

amelius wrote: post #211
buildsjets wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VOR is extremely short range and requires an extraordinary number of transmitters to provide any volume of coverage. Additionally it cannot provide coverage over oceanic areas. We USED TO have a nearly global long-range land based navigation system called LORAN, which only required one master station and a few remote stations to provide continent-scale coverage. But it was decommissioned in a cost savings move after…

Was LORAN also resistant against jamming/hacking?

Nothing is completely foolproof, but LORAN is much, much more resistant to jamming than GPS. GPS satellites orbit over 20,000 km from Earth and transmit at very limited power (less than 50 W). That makes it easy to overpower their faint signals. On top of that, GPS operates at a frequency over 1 GHz which means you can broadcast a jamming signal with a small antenna. LORAN is the opposite. It uses low frequency, extremely high power signals transmitted from stations relatively closer to the receiver. Those design choices make it less precise but vastly more robust.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#218

Post by cucumber3732842 »

colechristensen wrote: post #185
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know we all like to jack ourselves raw to the big powerful government handing out ruinous fines for things we don't like but realistically none of that is gonna stick to some McDonalds manager who's got a side gig importing Alibaba stuff or some delivery driver who bought it. You can't get blood from a stone. You're just guaranteeing the stone always stays a stone. Yeah the FCC could probably pull an ATF and shoot…

Maybe elevate your tone a bit. https://www.fcc.gov/enforcement/orders you can just look at the enforcement actions. Yesterday's actions include 7 $25k fines apparently all for companies illegally importing banned drones (a procedural fine just for ignoring the investigation attempts). You can peruse that list and find plenty of things, lots of pirate radio recently. They absolutely do go after apparent small fry and…

This is exactly the kind of circle jerk commentary I was complaining about. Tone doesn't make right.

The notices of liability the FCC posts to their website are not final orders. They're the federal equivalent of when your zoning sends a notice saying "your patio is 6in too close to the property line, according to the aerial photos it's been there since , you owe use ". It's essentially civil enforcement speak for "hey asshole, lawyer up and take this seriously". So then like a naive idiot you reply back "this patio predates my ownership of the property" and the money grubbing commissioner fires back "don't care, pay up". This is what the forfeiture order the FCC post on their website are. That said, the FCC is less slimy and less interested in fine money than your local commissioner probably is and I personally hold them in high regard.

Most of these end in the subject of the enforcement simply changing their behavior and paying a trivial fine (the lawyers are the real winners).

To quote those numbers as if they're final is no less dishonest than to quote lawsuit claims as if they're final judgements.

>They absolutely do go after apparent small fry and your "McDonalds manager" absolutely has assets that can be seized

Once again, you can't get blood from a stone. You might get a little but it's not worth the squeeze It is not politically sustainable to make a habit of ruining small time businesses and individuals (we're not talking about the Sackler family here) over nonviolent violations in technical laws where there is no clear chain of causation from the violation to some sort of harm to life or limb. The Mcdonalds Manager will settle for $5k, throwing away his storage unit of Alibaba stuff and not doing that anymore.

The reason I brought up the ATF is because they have a track record of forcing compliance with arcane arbitrary laws and they do it through flamboyant violence. This comes at political cost.

>The FCC doesn't have guns, they can't arrest you

Right, they'd get the FBI be the muscle like all the other Feds that don't have entry teams do.

The feds effectively all have guns. It's just a question of how many desks the papers must cross before they turn into bullets.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#219

Post by amelius »

jshier wrote: post #25
bronco21016 wrote: post #9

Whats 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…

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?

Maybe we just need to sprinkle around jammers, and use them as beacons.

Re: Cheap GPS jammers are filling the world with navigation dead zones

#220

Post by herczegzsolt »

nerdsniper wrote: post #193
stackedinserter wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even this highly theoretical harm can be avoided if you jam bluetooth with 50% duty cycle. Like, 2s on then 2s off.

Clearly you don’t have a family member who uses CGM’s. They are extremely sensitive to RF disruptions, and often fail for mind bogglingly dumb reasons. 2s on / 2s off would completely disable all of their functionality until the interference was gone. And possibly much longer - they are finicky.

Bluetooth operates in an unlicensed band. If any medical device relies on any unlicensed band for any life-critical thing that is horrible design.

I would absolutely support consequences to any device manufacturer if a death is caused by a jamming of unlicensed frequencies. (In my opinion, medical devices should be able to keep you alive in any jamming scenario if feasible. But using licensed bands is just bare minimum.)

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