There seems to be renewed hype about Global Positioning Satellite tracking technologies in the run up to the Labour Party annual conference.
Not content with announcing vague plans for tracking the 24 million motor vehicles on the UK's roads for road toll gathering purposes, the politicians also seem to grasping at GPS as a magic wand technology for papering over the budget and resource cracks in their running of the Prison and Probation Services.
BBC Newsnight ran a story in February about Sky Guardian tags
Today's story in the Observer 500 paedophiles to be tracked by satellite tags:
"Sky Guardian will unveil the first electronic device made specifically to track paedophiles at this month's Labour party conference and is to test the technology on a volunteer MP this week"
Who exactly is this Labour MP ?
However, we have huge doubts about the security of the fundamental idea behind such technology. GPS receivers need a clear view of the sky in order to directly see at least 4 of the satellites in orbit.
However GPS simply does not work indoors, or even in many cases outside in the shadow of tall buildings (given our northern latitude, the buildings do not have to be skyscrapers in order to block a direct view to geostationary satellites along the equator) or even overhanging trees or bushes, exactly the places that are supposed to be "off limits".
There already exist GPS spoofing devices which replay the very weak signal from the satellites to the reciever, which has no possible means of authenticating that the signal it is getting is from a real GPS satellite or not.
GPS jamming devices are also relatively cheap and easy to make.
With one of these devices, a criminal could pretend to be under curfew, but could be anywhere else he chose to be, with the tag system providing him with an alibi.
The current electronic offender tags linking the tag to a base unit and a landline phone by short range radio are not perfect either, (have no criminals ever managed to pick the locks etc or otherwise physically remove the tags ?), but they seem to be less flawed than these proposed GPS tracking tags.
If this system is "far cheaper than the current tagging devices used to enforce curfews and probation orders which costs around ?500 per offender each month" then presumably its use will spread to other types of offender who are currently electronically tagged, thereby increasing the market and resources available to create and sell GPS spoofing devices.
If GPS tags are used for motor vehicle tolls across the whole of Europe, then the market for such GPS replay spoofers and area jammers to fool the tags as to their real location, will probably exceed that for "pirate" satellite and cable TV decoders i.e. they will be easily available for moderate cost.
CORRECTION: thanks to those people who have reminded us that GPS satellites are mostly not geostationary about the equator.
"GPS has poorer coverage the further you go from the equator, but the GPS satellites are NOT geostationary, they are in a 55 degree inclined orbit, which gives poorer coverage away from the equator.
There are 4 augmentation satellites (WAAS and EGNOS systems) that ARE
geostationary that can also be used for navigation, but the 24 GPS
satellites are NOT geostationary."
It looks as if the German plan to use GPS for freight vehicles, a much less ambitious plan than outlined by the UK Minister for Transport, has already run into difficulties:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/go/risks/22/94/4
German toll system unusable
Debora Weber-Wulff
Thu, 09 Oct 2003 20:25:05 +0200
A German consortium called TollCollect, consisting of global players such as the Deutsche Telekom and DaimlerChrysler has been trying for some time to create a "modern toll collection system" using GPS, among other things. The German Government decided today to postpone the introduction of the system, at a cost of millions of Euros, because it doesn't work.
It was to be fully automatic. Trucks (and only trucks were to pay the toll) were to have an OBU (On-Board Unit, and of course a different one than all the other countries using such devices. Some trucks would need 3-5 of the things, depending on the routes they take). The OBU is to have a GPS receiver and a mobile transmitter, so that when the truck is moving it's position can be determined. When the truck drives over highways that are not toll-free for trucks, the toll is to be calculated and sent by mobile transmitter to a central office, that bills the shipping company direct.
Sounds simple, doesn't it?
For this purpose, lots of new masts were erected (as if we don't already have enough of this nonsense in Germany), and a beta test was arranged. Shipping companies complained that they were charged toll, although they were using the non-toll road that ran near a toll road. [GPS tolerance miscalculated? Maybe the German mapmakers made some mistakes?]. Others reported happily that they were charged no toll, although they were using a toll road. Some truckers reported the OBU busting its circuit breakers when the ignition in the truck was started.
The problem is, that no one knows what the cause for the problems is. Maybe it is the map update system, which updates the map in the OBU about 500-1000 times a month [that is around once an hour, or more, according to my calculations! - dww]. And of course, the OBUs can't be produced fast enough so that all the trucks that cross Germany have one by 1 Nov, the date
(already moved before) the toll was to have gone into effect.
Foreign truckers were to use a special system of 3500 terminals that are installed at truck stops throughout Germany. Or, toll could be paid in advance "by Internet". Reports are, that this doesn't work, either, and takes an enormous amount of time.
The minister for transport, Manfred Stolpe, has often been asked why German didn't use a low-tech system like Austria (they sell little stickers called Vignettes) or Italy (they put people in toll booths at specific points on the highways). Stolpe says, he wanted a high-tech solution that would work for decades.
Perhaps using a current mobile techonology and old-fashioned notions of high-tech was not really a great idea? Germany has now sunk over 730 Million Euros into the project. The toll of 12.4 (euro)cents per kilometer was to bring in 2.8 billion Euros a year into cash-strapped Germany, with the consortium raking in a fifth of the take.
There has also been scandal from the get-go in 2001, where by amazing coincidence a German-led consortium won the bid, although other bidders could show that they had experience in actually building such a thing. And then the government gave them a special liability dispensation, so that the consortium doesn't have to pay a fine for missing the start date, which has been moved before.
So here we have a fine mixture of mismanagement, high-tech woes and government games. The EU in Brussels is beginning to sniff into the affair, as it is beginning to smell like fish left on the counter for a week.
At least it gives Germans something to complain about to take their minds off the unemployment figures!
[German language articles:]
http://www.tagesschau.de/aktuell/meldungen/0,1185,OID1769140,00.html
Prof. Dr. Debora Weber-Wulff, FHTW Berlin, FB 4, Treskowallee 8, 10313 Berlin Tel: +49-30-5019-2320 http://www.f4.fhtw-berlin.de/people/weberwu/
It would be smart if some brave individual started a GPS removal service for cel phones and whatever else they decide we should have without our written consent.