Are We Too Reliant on GPS?

It is an issue that many law enforcement agencies and governments don't want to discuss, according to Professor Andrew Dempster, a specialist in satellite navigation signal processing and receiver design.

The problem? Australia and the world's reliance on global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), commonly known to many as GPS, and its vulnerability to be deliberately jammed or unintentionally interfered with.

"There is ... [a] group of people (users) who don't want to talk about it," said the professor, who works at the UNSW School of Surveying and Spatial Information Systems.

"They don't want to draw attention to the fact that GPS can be jammed. They don't want people to know that it's vulnerable. And included in that group are all the major telcos, some of the authorities that track vehicles and I imagine that the police are the same – that they don't talk about it that much."

Critical infrastructure that can be impacted by interference can include plane and airport navigation systems, emergency service vehicles, ships and security vans, some of which carry large amounts of money. Researchers in Britain have gone as far as saying that GPS failures could lead to "loss of life".

One known example of an airport and planes landing there being impacted by unintentional interference has already occurred in the US, the professor said.

According to The Economist, a driver who passed the Newark airport in New Jersey each day had a GPS jammer installed in his truck for personal reasons. The Economist said it took two months in late 2009 for investigators to track down the problem, which led to "brief daily breaks in reception."