GPS Under Attack

The story is at:

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/gps-under-attack-crooks-...

Cell phone blockers have been banned by the FCC for years. Also radar (Police or other) jamming devices are illegal to sell.

You can't sell working jamming devices, but cell phone jamming "Kits" have been available since shortly after cell phones became common. Radar jammer kits have been around a long time also.

I think the story is just another story that has been "Sensationalized".

Just like anything else,they always find a loop hole to harass you.

Big Yawn... There is always some jerk around trying to mess with other people. I'm not allowed to simply shoot them so I try to ignore them.

And about the only real way to defeat most of this is through crowd sourcing where data on jamming is collected and reported in near real time.

I'm just waiting for an "APP" to show up to do this for us that I'm not aware.

http://gpsworld.com/j911-fast-jammer-detection-10720/

This appears to be nothing more than has been available - and used - for a number of years.

I have seen a number of reports on the web, going back years, of GPS jammers. The majority of them so far seem to be used by people who drive for one of the companies that install a GPS tracker in each of their vehicles to confirm that the drivers are not goofing off or using the vehicle for personal business.

The jammers are carried in their vehicles by people who do not want their employer to be able to track their driving patterns, but the jammer's signal typically broadcasts far outside the vehicle in which it is being carried. The result is that other people lose the function of their GPS while within the broadcast range of the jammer.

- Tom -

Its the same issue as speeding.. We all know its against the law to SPEED in our vehicles. But we all do it every day. Just how many days can we go before it cost us money?

Its the same issue as speeding.. We all know its against the law to SPEED in our vehicles. But we all do it every day. Just how many days can we go before it cost us money?

That's why I always leave a trail of breadcrumbs.

I guess what we need to do is to make unlimited funds available to those experts who in cooperation with industry will protect us from this threat. It may takes billions of dollars and decades of hard work but hey, security is worth every penny, right?

Remember latest scare about hacking car systems? Where are those experts when there is some new technology introduced? They always certify that there is no threat and highest security standards were used. But after a while it's always a problem, that needs money for those same experts, to fix those non existing (as we were told before) threads.

And is there better source of money that those from government? As whole military-industrial complex is best example.

Yea, me neither.

Yeah. Seems much ado about nothing.

another thing that's illegal is the electronic device that changes red lights to green used for emergency vehicle's but they still sell them to idiot's if its electronic they will make it and sell it . there are times when you see a person texting and weaving in and out of their lane that you would love to jam their cell but them fiddling with it trying to figure out what's wrong could cause an accident . so all you can do is blow the horn at them and let them give you the finger for upsetting them .

.... And when ever people can suck, they will suck.

I only hate people on days ending in 'y'.

not here in maryland

a couple of years ago I read posts on another forum by several people who had experienced issues that matched the symptoms of jamming very closely.

It is second-hand information, but since jammers ARE being sold, it is logical that they are going to be used sometime and somewhere.

- Tom -

I've been traffic jammed by my Nuvi. Does that count?

I actually knew had a classmate long ago that used a cell phone jammer in college. What a douche!

That's because they haven't figured out how to tax it yet.

Used to create a headline (not to say it can't become more prevalent later)

interesting

the gov. is attempting to stop jammer manufacturers. Maybe just a drop in the bucket but at least its a step in the right direction.

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2016...

By coincidence I now have personal experience with what appeared to be jamming of my GPS.

Last Sunday I was driving north in the Central Valley of California when my GPS began acting very erraticly, and clearly had lost track of its location, as it started to tell me to make a left turn off a limited access highway in an area where there were no exits.

This happened more and more frequently until I passed an 18-wheeler, and then began happening less and less frequently, until it finally stopped completely. My GPS had never done that before, and it has not done it again in the 7 days since that event.

My conclusion is that the 18-wheeler probably had a GPS tracking device installed by the operator and that the driver had installed a jammer so the operator could not determine if he was following regulations.

- Tom -

You are correct on that point. What a lot of these drivers don't realize is many of the jammers are so wideband they also blank cell phones and emergency responder radio systems.

I was unaware of all of this.

These things report all types of info back through the system to the owner who installed. They are tracking for a reason.

Reminds me of the time a commuter around the beltway around JAX had a device in his vehicle to disrupt/block cellphone use. He used it every weekday so eventually the FCC started looking at it and confirmed the device blocker he was using and started tracking him. Long story short, he was caught and was fined thousands of dollars. I don't remember if he got any jail time with it or not.

Fining the company is fine but, there also needs significant FCC fines and incarceration time for those that do this

The problem is these devices are manufactured in countries outside the jurisdiction of the US courts and therefore ignore the FCC letters and judgements. The devices are actually smuggled into the US inside legal shipments where they are then routed to sellers through back doors.

And after doing just a touch of research; I found the following pages

http://www.gps.gov/spectrum/jamming/

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-11-249A1.pd...

and a quick search on google

https://www.google.com/#q=gps+jammers

presents lots of places here that appear to be actively selling these "GPS" jamming devices to whoever can cough up a few bucks.