Chronos Sentinel Project: Many Lies About GPS Jammers

In recent weeks whole internet was cluttering about the Sentinel research that was held in United Kingdom. There were dozens of articles describing those events in the fullest detail. As far as I know, it all began from the BBC News article and spread along the internet, but there is one thing for you to know: not all they have written there is truth. In fact, the article has many shady facts which are sometimes, not to put too fine a point on it, are absolutely wrong.

GPS jammers

Yes, GPS jammers are used by common citizens in their cars to keep their privacy from intrusions which are illegal in the same way that the usage of GPS jammers in UK. My guess is that they are using simple logic in their actions and common sense too, supposing that if they can be tracked illegally then they have full right to use illegal measures to keep their privacy safe. And you know, I agree with such point of view and if I would live there I would do the same thing.

And what would you do?

But let us continue the story. Sentinel Project used 20 roadside monitors for GPS jammer detection. They have been catching all cars with GPS jammers inside passed by those sensors. And they have determined that there are approximately 50-450 cases of GPS jammer usage in UK cars every single day. Nice job guys! But there it comes, the thing that I will cite because it is probably the biggest lie in the whole article:

"He told the BBC that evidence from the project suggested that most jammers were small portable devices with an area of effect of between 200m and 300m."

Lies, lies and again – lies!

Portable devices

Small portable GPS jammers physically cannot have effective jamming radius of 200-300 meters! Just look at these GPS jammers: GP5000 used in cars, GJ6 portable GPS jammer and RCJ40-D adjustable desktop jammer. Even the most powerful desktop model that I can hardly imagine working in someone’s car (it has no car power adapter) has the jamming radius of 40(!) meters but not those 200-300 which were said about in the BBC News article.

GPS jammers with such powerful output are military models which are big and heavy jammers carried by soldiers in the backpack or in huge case. If someone bought such big and powerful GPS jammer for usage in the city (e.g. placed that case in a trunk and turned GPS jammer on without lowering its power, if it can be regulated at all) than they did HUGE mistake and really endangered many vital things like ships and planes and so on. Still I guess it is impossible for all common people to find where to purchase such powerful jamming device and afford its price.

Blocking GPS signals

As for the comparison that was made, telling that GPS signal power may be compared with the car headlight that needs to illuminate half of the surface of our planet – this is also not an absolute truth. You see, common GPS trackers have such low power indeed, allowing even the small GPS jammer for car usage easily deal with it, but more powerful GPS units used in important navigation systems are using powerful and reliable microchips which signals are harder to block and small GPS jammers cannot harm their work.

Bottom Line

As the bottom line, I would like to say that to handle this situation we must work together. Government should tighten the privacy protection policy instead of stiffening anti-jammer rules or spying on the people, and citizens should consider the vital systems their lives rely upon and stop using powerful GPS jammers (as it was in Newark airport case back in 2009), using small car GPS jammers instead, if they still need to protect their privacy. Only then we will get somewhere.

At this point my thought are ended so now it is your turn to express your mind and speak out loud what do you think about all this jammers buzz and how this problem must be solved.