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Using a GPS as suspicious activity?


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Somebody forwarded an article on CNN about how the Sept 11 hijackers bought GPS units and may have visited intended target locations just prior to the attacks to register the coords to assist in navigation.

 

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/05/22/hijack.paper.trail/index.html

 

Without wishing offend anybody I might suggest that being seen around major landmarks and sensitive areas with a GPS may not be an entirely sensible thing to do, particular in countries with reputation for over-jealous security.

 

I know I have previously wandered around London with a GPS and even added waypoints for places of interest (Lloyds Building, Natwest Tower, 1 Canada Square etc) for fun. And I'm sure others have. Although if you have mapsource they are already in there as places of interest and of course coords for any place on earth are pretty easy to get from online sources and mapping software. But arguing that case with security might not be what you had in mind.

 

On a similar topic did anybody on the GYCH notice how RAF Fylingdales is now on the OS map, where as previously there was a blank bit on older editions?

 

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Don't mention the mushrooms

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We had a few problems with this sort of thing when we were flying from Houston to Boston about 4 days after September 11th. We'd followed the advice of the airline and made sure that anything electronic was bagged in our hand luggage, including our Vista. We also had a pewter model of the Apollo moon landing that we'd picked up at the Johnson Space Centre. Unfortunately, this just looked like a jumble of wires on the x-ray, so they asked us to unpack our bag. This was fine by us. So they took out the Vista, a GameBoy Advance and... a book called "Missile Guidance and Pursuit" that Geoff was reading (he's got a PhD in Control Theory so this kind of thing is like reading the Beano for him). We could see the thought process... missile guidance...GPS... Had a few uncomfortable minutes as we were taken aside separately to explain. Meanwhile the GameBoy and game cartridges were dismantled. Still don't quite know why. Fortunately, our stories tallied so, after a quick check with Geoff's employer (thankfully their HQ is in Houston) that he really was what he said he was, we were allowed to continue. Suffice to say that the book stayed in the hold luggage for the rest of the holiday.

 

Two Bears

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quote:
Originally posted by dylanhayes:

 

Without wishing offend anybody I might suggest that being seen around major landmarks and sensitive areas with a GPS may not be an entirely sensible thing to do, particular in countries with reputation for over-jealous security.


I know this isn't going to cut any ice with a policeman with a big gun, but you could try pointing out that you don't need a GPS receiver to get accurate coordinates of landmarks. Mapsource will do the job without leaving the comfort of your own home.

 

Also, tall buildings will be marked on aviation maps anyway with accurate coordinate (my guess) for obvious reasons.

 

quote:

On a similar topic did anybody on the GYCH notice how RAF Fylingdales is now on the OS map, where as previously there was a blank bit on older editions?


 

It's been decommissioned, there's no longer anything secret there.

 

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jeremyp

The second ten million caches were the worst too.

http://www.jeremyp.net/geocaching

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In recent years the original `golfball' radars have been replaced by a solid-state phased-array radar (SSPAR), built by Raytheon. This radar consists of a three-sided truncated pyramid about 120 feet high. Each face is about 84ft across and contains an array of 2,560 transmit/receive modules each with a circularly-polarised `Pawsey stub' antenna. Each module produces a transmitter power of 340 Watts and this gives an overall mean power output from the three faces of 2.5 Megawatts - a very similar performance to the old golfballs. The new radar has the same 3000 mile range as the old one. It was declared operational on 1st October 1992.

 

But anyway - it's not like you needed a map to find the Fylingdales golfballs before that anyway.... you could see them for miles - and from the air without too much trouble, and I don't expect that there was an OS agent in Moscow anyway.

 

----8<--------8<---CUT-HERE---8<--------8<----

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As regards Fylingdales, it's slightly weird that the biggest landmark in the entire area was not on the map in the hope it would be somehow thus be invisible to any enemy. As well as a pretty obvious visual clues, beaming out all those megawatts of radio waves is going to make it pretty easy to find. Having said that spying is often appearently about gathering information from public sources, but presumably not OS maps until recently. Certainly there have been cases were a local streetplan would have saved considerable problems in bombing the wrong target (the Chinese embassy was cleary shown on a Belgrade street map, yet it still got bombed by NATO in 1999).

 

I believe that prisions also used to kept off OS maps on the assumption the building plan could aid escapes. I'm sure there are other similar geographical oddities on OS maps as well.

 

This link shows an interesting contrast between what the map says is there, and slightly different picture from the air. I believe the installation the top right hand corner is some kind of communications equipment. It would certainly seem to belong to the MOD as it is marked as being a 'danger area'.

 

http://www.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?x=510500&y=239500&scale=25000&rt=overlay.htm

 

(move your mouse to compare map and photo)

 

*******************************************************

Don't mention the mushrooms

*******************************************************

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Also Dounreay - although it is marked on some maps now. Originally none of the nuclear establishments were marked, which was a real pain when we were sent off to a site we hadn't visited before... although I've no idea how you could miss something the size of Sellafield.

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