>They used wood-splitting axes to break into two clean rooms containing nine satellites being built for the U.S. government. Lumsdaine took his axe to one of the satellites, hitting it over 60 times.
>They were arrested and faced up to 10 years in prison for destroying federal government property, causing an estimated $2 million in damage.
That seems to be a pretty minimal amount of damage, considering the total cost per satellite.
Also, the article gets some of the technical details quite wrong. For example:
>In 2000, Selective Availability was disabled and from that point on, anyone with a GPS receiver could get location data as precise as the data used for military and missile navigation.
This isn't true.
1) A GPS receiver that works above 60000ft or at speeds beyond 1000mph is still considered a military munition. You can't buy one and you can't leave the country with one, even if it only uses the civilian signal.
2) Selective Availability essentially distorted the timing of the L1 (C/A) (coarse / aquisition) unencrypted civilian signal, resulting in location errors up to ~100m greater than the nominal accuracy of ~16ft. It was the government essentially spoofing it's own signal at varied amounts to introduce uncertainty.
Turning off SA had nothing to do with the encrypted military (P(Y)) signals.
The encrypted (P(Y)) signals (on both L1 & L2) are still very much encrypted, and clearance is still required to obtain a compatible receiver, at significant cost. In practice augmented (agps) and differential GPS technologies produce higher accuracy and precision than the P code alone would, at less cost and hassle.
The new block satellites coming online add some signals for greater accuracy, but the civilian / military signal segregation and encryption still exists.
>They used wood-splitting axes to break into two clean rooms containing nine satellites being built for the U.S. government. Lumsdaine took his axe to one of the satellites, hitting it over 60 times.
>They were arrested and faced up to 10 years in prison for destroying federal government property, causing an estimated $2 million in damage.
That seems to be a pretty minimal amount of damage, considering the total cost per satellite.
Also, the article gets some of the technical details quite wrong. For example:
>In 2000, Selective Availability was disabled and from that point on, anyone with a GPS receiver could get location data as precise as the data used for military and missile navigation.
This isn't true.
1) A GPS receiver that works above 60000ft or at speeds beyond 1000mph is still considered a military munition. You can't buy one and you can't leave the country with one, even if it only uses the civilian signal.
2) Selective Availability essentially distorted the timing of the L1 (C/A) (coarse / aquisition) unencrypted civilian signal, resulting in location errors up to ~100m greater than the nominal accuracy of ~16ft. It was the government essentially spoofing it's own signal at varied amounts to introduce uncertainty.
Turning off SA had nothing to do with the encrypted military (P(Y)) signals.
The encrypted (P(Y)) signals (on both L1 & L2) are still very much encrypted, and clearance is still required to obtain a compatible receiver, at significant cost. In practice augmented (agps) and differential GPS technologies produce higher accuracy and precision than the P code alone would, at less cost and hassle.
The new block satellites coming online add some signals for greater accuracy, but the civilian / military signal segregation and encryption still exists.
Nobody is getting guided-missle level navigation.