Posted on 07/05/2026 1:25:32 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
U.S. policy used to jam up GPS. Now, those signals beam into your pocket.
Shortly after the burst of the dot-com bubble in 2000, a new type of Silicon Valley start-up began to crop up: companies specializing in GPS chips. At the time, GPS — the Global Positioning System, a constellation of satellites that provide location and time to receivers on Earth, courtesy of the American taxpayer — was still relatively niche for everyday people.
This small handful of companies was founded on the basis of two gambles. One was that, like any other chip, GPS chips — at the time, about the size of a postage stamp — would continue to get smaller and more powerful. The other was that GPS could fulfill a recent — and technically challenging — government order: make mobile phones trackable when calling emergency services.
Landlines were already trackable. Every landline phone number in the United States was linked to a database of addresses, which enabled dispatchers to know where to send ambulances or other emergency vehicles if an emergency caller hung up or didn’t know where they were.
Mobile phones available at the time didn’t have this capability, and by 1999 the Federal Communications Commission had issued a diktat: By 2001, mobile phones had to transmit a location when they called 911.
In the late 1990s the most obvious way to locate a mobile phone was to use triangulation from mobile phone masts, using the timing of the phone signals. But because the signals are traveling across the ground — rather than beamed down unobstructed from space — they can encounter all kinds of obstacles en route, making their location less accurate.
The runner-up method was GPS. Although this was more accurate — besides sending signals from orbit, GPS satellites also contain highly accurate...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Sound advice.
We’ve all submitted ourselves to “the beast”, in fact I’m typing this on one right now.
My step dad took us to visit the part of the phone company that he was doing at that point in his career, it was some kind of switching station with floor to ceiling whatevers, after showing us the back up batteries of containers with liquids, he walked down one of the rows and plugged his testing phone into the switch for our house and let us hear a little of my stepbrother (or real brother?) talking to someone, I’m not sure he should have shared his secret power with us, but it was an eye opener.
“We’ve all submitted ourselves to “the beast”, in....”
No. Just you have Bullish. JUST YOU!
Why did you submit yourself to the Beast
I had a neighbour who passed away a few years ago now who had worked for British Intelligence. He didn’t look like James Bond but came from Sri Lanka and thus could appear in some places without raising suspicion. Anyways I had gotten a car sometime before he died and when he looked it over he said good trunk...you can fit some bodies in it. :)
A few years ago I was waiting to get the emissions test on my car. My phone chimed and there was a notification from the Yellow Pages app. It said, “Will yoir car pass the emissions test? Be sure. Make an appointment with a certified mechanic today.”
Friends are what makes life fascinating.
No it’s the thing you hold in your hand and hold up to your head with that symbol on it.
I like how GPS parts are so cheap now.
You can get a receiver with antenna for less than 3USD.
Bkmk
There’s some mighty blusterous folks here on FR. I wonder how much the gumment takes notice? My guess is by now they have figured as long as we’re online here we’re like old toothless dogs whose bark is worse than their bite. Sometimes I think some posts are generated by Monty Python AI.
C'mon, Slick Willy?
The only thing he understood was how big. How big a bag of money, how big a bag of coke, and how big the ---- were that bribed him.
“Leave your device at home unless you absolutely need to have it with you.”
You never know when you might absolutely need it.
None of this works for many illegal aliens. There are MILLIONS whose whereabouts the government can NOT pinpoint. Literally. Tell me another one....
I am not.
I cannot use Apple stuff, I am not...............
I think they just feel sorry for us. I know I couldn’t limp away fast enough, no matter how slight the crime.
What blue dot?
I have never had an iPhone, so I had to look it up.
There are “trackers” and there are phones. Each behaves differently.
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