Somebody is jamming our radar, sir!
Posted on 08/09/2013 4:49:00 PM PDT by BenLurkin
NEWARK, N.J. (CBSNewYork) – A New Jersey man wanted to hide his movements from his boss. He ended up interfering with operations at a busy airport instead.
Now he’s facing a massive fine....
Gary Bojczak admitted buying an illegal GPS jammer to thwart the tracking device in his company vehicle, Aiello reported.
The problem was his work took him near Newark Liberty Airport, and his GPS jammer, which available online for less than $100, interfered with a new GPS-based guidance system called Smartpath being tested at the airport.
Federal agents tracked the jamming signal to Bojczak’s truck and this week hit him with a big fine — $32,000. Federal Aviation Administration is worried and is pushing to expand the use of GPS in aircraft. He said inexpensive jammers could cause big problems.
“To the extent these devices are out there and illegal, they have to send a message and pursue those jammers to make sure that they’re not anywhere near the airports, not being used at the airports,” Alexander said.
(Excerpt) Read more at newyork.cbslocal.com ...
/johnny
Where’s Kenneth when you need him. Man probably didn’t know the frequency.
A person could have a lot of fun with those things.
When the FAA wants to give the US airline system an enema, Liberty International is where they stick the tube. I will NEVER forget my 18 hour layover in that shit hole.
broadcasting in a manner not approved by the Fcc is a big no no, and in the modern world, maintaining the integrity of the E-M spectrum is a proper role of government.
That said, the increasing use of GPS to monitor and control movement of vehicles puts our air and maritime traffic at risk on multiple fronts. If a dishonest truck driver can disrupt a major airport’s traffic for avhundred bucks with no training, imagine what an enemy who actually intended harm could do with a national-level budget and intent.
A person aught to get the same penalty as would come from jamming the existing ILS systems.
Anybody who f@cks around with jamming aviation navigation deserves what people get if they try to knock planes out of the sky any other way.
The fail safe is called the pilot. It isn’t foolproof though.
They are illegal. Ebay used to have them for under $20 but they have disappeared. Other online outlets still have them. Supposedly the range is only a couple of meters, enough to foil a tracking device that has been planted on your vehicle. Maybe this guy had the super-deluxe high power model.
So did he lose his job? Journalism sucks.
Ironically, the Obama-led FCC a few years ago did everything in its power to enable Lightsquared (run by a large Obama supporter) to build out it’s wireless network that would have disrupted GPS operation nationwide. Fortunately, that train was derailed and as usual, not even a speck of dust made it’s way to Obama himself.
GPS has become so valuable that acts like this must be punished to the fullest extent.
Maybe it was my excerpt that sucks. Article reports he got fired.
Woo hoo. Somebody in the FAA is getting huge kickback checks.
Actually it’s about cost. With GPS, all the FAA needs to do is publish the approaches. Other navaids require maintenance of a lot of infrastructure.
What a minute... He didn’t want his boss tracking him? So is unplugging the thing out of the question? Pulling the fuse?
They actually owe Bojczak a small debt of gratitude. He showed during the testing phase how easily their shiny new system can be disrupted. Imagine if this was discovered the hard way during a crash investigation after going live.
Excessive fine no way it should be enforced its clear his intent wasn’t to disrupt the airlines and the airlines should have better equipment if they are getting jammed by sub 100 dollar equipment thats a big possible risk even putting this news out there. Who do you think will buy these devices now.
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