[IP] STUPID US Defines Plans to Shut Down GPS in C rises
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Subject: US Defines Plans to Shut Down GPS in Crises
Author: Ross Stapleton-Gray <ross@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: 15th December 2004 5:12:29 pm
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2004/12/15/financial1859EST0389.DTL
Bush prepares for possible shutdown of GPS network in national crisis
TED BRIDIS, AP Technology Writer
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
(12-15) 15:59 PST WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has ordered plans for
temporarily disabling the U.S. network of global positioning satellites
during a national crisis to prevent terrorists from using the navigational
technology, the White House said Wednesday.
Any shutdown of the network inside the United States would come under only
the most remarkable circumstances, said a Bush administration official who
spoke to a small group of reporters at the White House on condition of
anonymity.
...
It would be nice to think that "the most remarkable circumstances" would be
limited to "in the event of porcine aviation," but this feels like yet
another hunting-ants-with-a-shotgun hysterical response to the Boogeyman of
Terror. GPS is a critical service for myriad services, and increasingly
incorporated into devices, vehicles and other products; presumably the
scenarios they're imagining are along the lines of "Terrorists program
backyard cruise missile to hit Rose Garden using GPS guidance," and rest
assured there are countless alternative ways to manage that.
The most ominous note in the article might be, "The president also
instructed the Defense Department to develop plans to disable, in certain
areas, an enemy's access to the U.S. navigational satellites and to similar
systems operated by others," presumably applying to Europe's planned
Galileo, or Russia's GLONASS (http://www.glonass-center.ru/frame_e.html).
Unilateral denial of service against foreign governments' or alliances'
strategic infrastructure, absent direct conflict with *them*, strikes this
semi-informed reader as... unwise.
As someone who occasionally researches "red team" threat scenarios, I'd be
interested in others' thoughts on whether there are credible circumstances
where one could actually see "turning off" GPS over some non-trivial
operating area as useful to *us* (and of course, creating new protocols
whereby one can turn off GPS wholesale invites more opportunities for
someone to hack that process, and turn it off as a threat *against* us...).
Ross
-----
Ross Stapleton-Gray, Ph.D., CISSP
Stapleton-Gray & Associates, Inc.
http://www.stapleton-gray.com
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