The Use and Abuse of GPS Technology

Posted on December 29, 2004 in Geocaching War

We’re flickering in and out because we’re still adjusting after last week’s bandwidth attack. But let’s go now to the world of GPS….

You have to do a little reading between the lines when you consider the European reaction to a 15 December policy paper on the subject of what will happen to our access to global positioning satellites in the event of a war. Defenders of the U.S. as protector of world peace (stop laughing!) manifesto have said that there is nothing to fear in the plan but a commentator at Yachting and Boating World pulled this out of an Air Force Counterspace policy paper:

What will we do ten years from now when American lives are put at risk because an adversary chooses to leverage the global positioning system or perhaps the Galileo constellation to attack American forces with precision?

The same poster goes on to report:

Comments like this have a way of being taken the “wrong way.” An ugly row recently erupted after a British paper reported that European participants at a Royal United Services Institute conference thought they heard U.S. officials threaten “irreversible action” to deny hostile powers access to Galileo in a crisis–although other participants disputed that any threat was issued.

Coming out of the administration that told us that there were WMDs in Iraq and that rewrote the definitions of “prisoner of war” and “torture”, this is scarey stuff. Comments met with the Usurper’s “That’s not what we meant line” have a way of being right on target. Another commentator at the yachting site had this to say:

Unless you are in the middle of an ocean from where you can watch the missiles criss-crossing the heavens, I suspect the lack of ability to navigate is somewhat academic.

And that’s the point. A trucker’s site reported that Garmin Industries sources (Garmin is the leading manufacturer of civilian GPS in the world) told the Kansas City Business Journal that they don’t think civilians would ever be denied GPS access in the event of a war or other national crisis. After all, it wasn’t turned off after 9-11 (when everything was supposedly secured) or during any of the “heightened alert status” interludes. But this is like saying that we didn’t invade Syria or Iran in 2003 or 2004, so we won’t do it in 2005 or 2006. The fact is that they are talking about it, making plans.

The United States has its head up its ass when it comes to GPS. The original commentator at the yachting site ended his piece with this telling remark:

Whereas Americans tend to think of GPS as a military application that civilians are permitted to use (reflecting the military origins of GPS), much of the rest of the world sees it as a global public utility. I suspect we’ll be hearing a lot about this policy by Galileo’s supporters.

The satellites of commentary triangulate the position nicely. Americans think paranoically. The rest of the world thinks in terms of the greatest good for all. This Pax Americana is not now, never has been, and never will be a Peace because we are continuing to lay out war strategies and arm ourselves for conflict. The European Union, it appears, is being marketed as the next Big Adversary. We’re trying to pull Britain out “for old times’ sake” but our posture towards our NATO allies these past four years has been only a few toenail clippings short of bellicose.

I don’t like this Humvee Powered Bully that the Usurper Administration tries to make us to be. When it comes to essential civil rights and compassion for the world’s suffering, the Europeans — who share our ancestral roots — come closer to meeting my criteria for peace, liberty, and justice than we do at the present. Doubtless there are those in the GPS community who will take offense at my remarks, call me unpatriotic and a lover of terrorists. To them I say that I am sick of terrorism — especially that coming out of Washington D.C., which keeps me watching over my shoulder every second of every day not for mad bombers and revolutionaries but for certain of my fear-driven, sell-our-freedom-for-false-security fellow Americans.