BS: Fake GPS - a worry

Subject: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Mr Red
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 05:18 AM

New Yorker article

More serious than Fake News. This is GPS spoofing.

Apparently when Putin goes to appear anywhere any GPS devices within range of his motorcade report a location within a nearby airport. And most commercially available drones have ring-fence software to forbid entry within sensitive locations (military, airport etc). Worse - ships approaching Shanghai have noticed erroneous GPS derived locations. Which if this is cloaking to hide illegal smuggling the Chinese State would know about it, so why is it tolerated? (aka generated thereby?).

SatNav use is going to be annoying, but the criminals have access to the jammers and this kit isn't expensive, relative to the gains. But ships getting lost is a worry, the monstrosities of today take miles to slow down. It is only a matter of time. And ships are required to broadcast their position regularly, so we will know if the cause is this menace. Pirates hijacking is not the worst scenario!

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: JHW
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 05:25 AM

And they've tested a missile that can shoot satellites

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Jack Campin
Date: 13 Aug 20 - 06:52 AM

There have been other examples. A bug has repeatedly led to ships all over the world having their location reported as off the coast of northern California, and Turkish ships exporting arms illegally to Libyan gangs just vanish off the system in the middle of the Mediterranean.

Britain's world-beating foreigner-free system built by a bankrupt American satellite business will work perfectly, of course,

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Mr Red
Date: 14 Aug 20 - 04:48 AM

the strap line of the article was that to design a robust system it will have to be "paid for use".

The Ordnance Survey in the UK sell access to their system where sophisticated surveying receivers spend 30 minutes in contact over mobile phone networks to OS stations that have their grid reference known to a fraction of a millimetre.

The software knows from the average variation what the error is from the satellites signals, and makes correction to within 1 mm. Satellites values, at the metre resolution, move about a lot, I see it on my (non-phone) phone.

I bumped into a surveying set-up recently using a Bench Mark that I had photographed and after a time they gave me the OSGR to the mm. Which I used for Stonehouse Ocean Bridge SO 7981 0504

I can't help thinking that a system accurate enough for car navigation could be bolted onto mobile phone masts. Let's face it, we pay for access and the masts don't exactly move. It has been tried in an informal way. It just needs refining. Of course in big cities with tall buildings it may not work so well. Like Lundun (innit?). But would us yokels care? Though beware 5G, that may be easier to use such a system at this stage.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Penny S.
Date: 14 Aug 20 - 06:57 AM

Mr Red, have you got the FBM at Sapperton? I was quite excited when I realised what it was as a friend's PhD was concerned with levelling data. I've had a hunt for it on Street View - it's heavily overgrown at the time of filming, took some identification.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: leeneia
Date: 14 Aug 20 - 11:09 AM

I can't read the article linked in the first post unless I agree to pay $7.50 a month. That is not in the cards.

Keeping drones out of airports and military bases sounds like a good idea to me. I don't want to be in an airliner that sucked a drone into an engine.

As for the ships at Shanghai, sometimes GPS messes up. About 3 years ago my husband and I were taking a trip to a small city in SW Missouri to view work on a slate roof. At a point where we should have been on a four-lane highway, our GPS had us on a dirt road in a trailer park.
We put it down to a glitch.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 14 Aug 20 - 11:14 AM

Damn. I opened this thread thinking it was going to be about people pretending to be doctors...

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Aug 20 - 09:33 AM

Penny_S
benchmarks.mister.red/#SO95040287 Sapperton Fundamental BM - I can walk there in theory, in fact, actually have when clocking the extant milestones along the T&S canal. But wimped-out on the return and waited for the bus to take the 13 miles back.
There is an FBM at Sharpness, and it was on the list but needs a couple of busses. Then COVID. I could have driven I guess, but the busses are going there anyway, climate change & all that. And is my journey really necessary?

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: JHW
Date: 15 Aug 20 - 04:07 PM

The Early Warning Radar Station at Fylingdales nr Whitby is obvious even from a distance but it didn't appear on the OS map.
Tried to confirm this is still the case but can't find it.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Aug 20 - 05:16 PM

well the domes were there in the 70's, I saw them. And the natural amphitheater where they held mock/practice battles.

try what3words.com/future.airfields.blurs but the domes are gone. The phased array radar is a frustum of a pyramid now.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: JHW
Date: 16 Aug 20 - 05:47 AM

Thanks yes I've a distant pic of the other radar thing but was suggesting that trying to hide secrets has long been practiced. Newer technology, newer methods.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: EBarnacle
Date: 17 Aug 20 - 12:11 PM

GPS is often inaccurate, anyway. Street afftrsses are often wrong--sometimes by as muxh as 1/4 mile. Lady Hillary and I have experienced the dirt road deviation also.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Jeri
Date: 17 Aug 20 - 01:39 PM

I ended up with a couple thousand buck worth of damage to the under-bits of my car because Waze (GPS navigation thing) took me over a road that wasn't a road. Two things I learned were 1) question GPS, and 2) I have really good insurance.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: BobL
Date: 18 Aug 20 - 04:04 AM

The essential thing to know about GPS, or any other information-handling system for that matter, is when to ignore it.
In the Luton area we've had cases of drivers entering bus lanes by blindly following their SatNav instructions, and not even seeing the car traps right in front of them. Costs them a bomb in fines and repairs, and serve them right.


.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Nick
Date: 18 Aug 20 - 06:43 AM

Not hidden on the map :)

Fylingdales

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Mr Red
Date: 19 Aug 20 - 04:30 AM

I opened this thread thinking it was going to be about people pretending to be doctors...

Well it is about doctoring .....................!
And pretending.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: JHW
Date: 19 Aug 20 - 06:27 AM

Thanks Nick, found it on my OL26. Don't have worn out copies of course so alas can't check back.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Nick
Date: 19 Aug 20 - 07:12 AM

JHW - The old ones are in the local library. I'll have a look when I go in again.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Penny S.
Date: 19 Aug 20 - 10:07 AM

I remember running up against Menwith Hill when I was rtying to find a bit of Roman Road. Being by myself I had had a look at the moor to the west and decided it was too difficult to navigate, so went east to what appeared to be a blank piece of farmland. Only it wasn't. So I stopped in a layby and wrote on my map what it was. And while I was doing so, a jeep came past with some very threatening looking USAF MPs in it, and I got a bit cross. How dare a pair of Americans look at me like that in my own country. (Yorkshiremen of corse would be entitled to). They left me to it, but I absconded anyway. This was long before protests there.

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Nick
Date: 19 Aug 20 - 01:47 PM

I was out walking in Cornwall round about 1970ish and walked along the cliffs from Chapel Porth past Porthtowan. Being a keen birdwatcher I was looking through my binoculars at the beach when I was approached by two policeman asking what I was doing. "Looking at the birds" says I which was met with some disbelief.

I was blissfully unaware that Nancekuke was at the top of the next stretch of cliffs where they had made Sarin gas in the 1950s and I think there was still things going on there in those days.

Having established that I wasn't a spy the policeman looked out to sea and said "Hell of a storm coming in are you walking back?" "Yes" "Well you are going to get very wet"

And they were very right

Subject: RE: BS: Fake GPS - a worry
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 19 Aug 20 - 07:44 PM

Well Nick (and, oddly, I've only ever met two mudcatters in the flesh and they're both called Nick!), don't use that excuse with the plod if you're ever birdwatching at Strangles Beach at High Cliff, as there's a de facto nudist end of the beach. Wouldn't want you to be unintentionally arrested for voyeurism! Mind you, the cops would probably have their bins out as well... :-)