Auto GPS systems: Are we being watched?

No

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by Robert Freeman

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Now the question of "Are we being watched?" is a relative question based on two things: 1) who is asking the question? and 2) who are you referring to as doing the watching? As I have no idea who posed this question I will have to make some assumptions of my own. First I will say that the individual asking the question is a inquisitive American who knows nothing to very little about the actual inner-workings of the United States government and how GPS systems and their satellites actually work. For the second portion I am going to have to go with two different entities. First I will pick the GPS provider and their satellites, which is the easier of the two to discuss. The second will be the United States government, which is also easy to discuss but most likely my article in this aspect will fall on deaf ears. For the sake of organization I will be pairing the GPS system provider and the inquisitive American first and then I will follow that up with the inquisitive American and the United States government.

The GPS system provider and their satellites are not watching the inquisitive American in any way, shape, or form, in an active manner and for all intensive purposes wouldn't want to. The provider is in the GPS system market in order to make money, so why do they care wear the people are? The answer is they don't and in reality this isn't how the GPS system works. The GPS system you buy at the store isn't actually reporting its position to the GPS provider, it is actually triangulating its position on the Earth based on signals received from multiple overhead satellites. The satellite in space knows at all times where it is relative to the surface of the Earth (I wont go into how it knows that here) and to other orbiting bodies above the Earth and uses the angle of measurement and time it takes for a signal to get from itself to the inquisitive American's Garmin and estimates (yes estimate...your GPS system is not 100% accurate) a location for the American on the globe. The process doesn't stop there though because the American wants as specific as a position as possible so multiple satellites provide this data to the hand held device which converts all the date instantaneously to the position the American sees on his or her screen. Nowhere in this loop (which is actually more complex then I described) is the GPS provider trying to access the data down-linked to an individual handset. They are more concerned with if their multi-million dollar satellites are operating correctly and their orbit isn't deteriorating. Not to say that they couldn't, but like I said before, why would they want to?

Now comes the one that makes me feel all warm inside, the United States government. First off, do you honestly think the government has the money and the manpower to sit there and track where every GPS is in the United States? The answer is no! We can't even find money to pave roads, build homes, and fight wars, so what makes you think we can fund a super-massive (yes I said super-massive) organization to monitor GPS positions in the United States? Secondly, there are numerous laws and presidential directives on the books explicatively forbidding this type of activity by any government entity unless express written permission has been given by some high-level individuals and the person themselves. Now everyone will try to throw the Patriot Act into my face but most of those people probably don't know what the Patriot Act is or the significance of it. Yes it gives the government the power to monitor Americans if they think they are problems, but that is just it, that is all the government will do and if not because it is against the law to do otherwise, the money and the manpower is just no there to do it! Any individual skeptical and weary about if the the government is watching them through GPS, they should be more worried about if the government is tracking the terrorist in the van behind them that may be planning to blow up a mall in a few months. The government isn't perfect but it isn't specifically out to get everyone....the public is what put them there in the first place! I know I am the only person so far to right a "no" article on this topic, but I will stand behind it and you can't sway me otherwise.

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