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U.S. Government to Shut Down GPS

Their reasoning? To "fight terrorists."

President Bush has ordered plans for temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational technology, the White House said Wednesday.
[...]
The GPS system is vital to commercial aviation and marine shipping.

So if you use GPS to get yourself to work, out of a jam when you're lost, or out of the woods when you're hunting (and don't even think about Geocaching), this could really screw you over. And not to mention that if you're flying on a plane, this could make it so the pilot suddenly has no idea where he's going or where he is.

Isn't that nice? Thanks, Bush. Quoting this BB post: "Nice one, George: why not shut down the fire-departments, too, so that 'terrorists won't be able to survive fires started by careless smoking?'"

Posted by Jake on 12/16/04 @ 02:56 PM
Posted in Stupid | 4 Comments | Permalink

4 Comments

Brad said on 12/17/04 @ 09:38 AM:
So, talk about your idiot arguments. He (Bush) talks about shutting down GPS in a national emergency, and you talk about "oh no, you could be minorly inconvienenced" (sp? I hate that word). And by the way, pilots have flown for about 100 years without GPS. I think they can handle it for 1 day in a national emergency. Let's recall that GPS ISN'T LIFE OR DEATH. Anyone who is in the woods with only a GPS and isn't familiar with the area perhaps shouldn't be in the woods. I mean, Bush is the worst president of my lifetime, but at least wait until he actually does something stupid to criticize him. Wait five minutes. Don't jump on him for everything he does.

Jesse Thompson said on 12/17/04 @ 10:28 PM:
However brad, shutting down GPS is a Bad Thing. Jake may have cited several blaize examples of things that could go wrong, but GPS is being integrated into everything we do nowadays. Today the universe doesn't hang in the balance over it, but by the time the administration can build a GPS off switch, and then decide to use it, it will.

7 years ago The Internet was about as vital to the lifeblood of the country as GPS is now. Today, a large scale denial of service attack on the internet is exactly the kind of terrorist attack this administration is trying to prevent.

Brad said on 12/19/04 @ 05:13 PM:
Then knowing about the issue of possible denial of service will help to ensure that backup systems are available to forstall an emergency but provide for a shutting down of an explotable system.

Chad said on 01/07/05 @ 11:06 AM:
However, Brad, Pilots haven't flow IFR (or under instrument conditions) without some navigational aid. The current aids are called VOR's and the FAA is going to replace them with GPS. So, that is the sole means for navigating for all commerical aircraft. While most aircraft could resume flying VFR in an emergency, under instrument conditions they would be toast...

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