Free Republic

With more snow approaching, New York mayor vows preparednessThu Jan 6, 2011 5:50pm EST NEW YORK (Reuters) - With New York City facing another likely snowstorm this weekend, Mayor Michael Bloomberg vowed on Thursday that improvements have been made to avoid the mishandled mess that was made of last week's massive storm. Bloomberg, who has been widely criticized for the many streets that went unplowed and the transportation systems that ground to a halt, said the city is better prepared for snow. An accumulation of roughly six inches is expected in the New York region on Friday. The city is...

MOSCOW, Dec. 5 (Xinhua) -- Three Russian satellites launched earlier Sunday have crashed into the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii Islands after falling off course, RIA news agency reported. Russia's space agency Roscosmos is not available for confirmation at present. According to the latest information gained by RIA Novosti, the upper stage of the Proton-M rocket carrier and three Glonass-M navigation satellites have fallen into the sea area 1500 km northwest of Honolulu, causing no casualties nor damages. Interfax said in a latest report the crash might be caused by stronger propulsive force of the Proton-M rocket, which deviated from its...

In Afghanistan, perhaps more so than in a small Polish town, it’s important to know exactly where you’re going. So you can imagine the frustration felt by Polish troops serving in Afghanistan when faulty GPS equipment told them that they weren’t in Afghanistan, but in one of several African nations or back home in the small town of Zielona Gora in Western Poland. The equipment, according to one Polish officer quoted in the Polish press, has caused some units to become completely disoriented in the Afghan frontier, a place where coalition soldiers really don’t want to be wandering around aimlessly....

Since the GPS-guided Excalibur artillery round first made it to Iraq and Afghanistan, roughly 200 rounds have been fired. In the last week or so, use of that round has pulsed. Army artillerymen have fired 20 rounds or 10 percent of the total in Afghanistan, according to James Riley, Raytheon Missile System’s vice president for land systems. We don’t have similar numbers for the Marines, who have been using the shell as well. Excalibur has been at the center of debate in the Army as the service grapples with the tradeoffs of cost, capability and logistics. Army Vice Chief of...

SAN FRANCISCO – Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old computer salesman and community college student, took his car in for an oil change earlier this month and his mechanic spotted an odd wire hanging from the undercarriage. The wire was attached to a strange magnetic device that puzzled Afifi and the mechanic. They freed it from the car and posted images of it online, asking for help in identifying it. Two days later, FBI agents arrived at Afifi's Santa Clara apartment and demanded the return of their property — a global positioning system tracking device now at the center of a raging...

For the last five years, South Korean intelligence has been trying to get their hands on North Korea's new GPS jammer. The South Korean recently revealed that they had evidence that these jammers were now mounted on North Korean electronic warfare vehicles. These jammers are used to spoil the aim of GPS guided bombs and missiles, and are believed to have a range of 50-100 kilometers. South Korea believes the jammer technology was obtained from Russia. The U.S., NATO, Israel and several Middle Eastern nations (friendly to the U.S.) are big users of GPS guided weapons. The North Korean device...

A 20-year-old college student in California said he was shocked to discover he has been followed by the FBI when earlier this week he found a GPS tracker placed underneath his car. Yasir Afifi, a half-Egyptian, half-American Muslim and U.S. citizen, said he was having the oil changed on his car last Sunday at a Santa Clara, Calif., auto shop when he noticed a wire and the black device underneath the automobile as it was being raised. "I was born here in Santa Clara, I just turned 20 last August. I'm a sales manager, we sell laptops and I'm a...

PHOTO CAPTION: "Yasir Afifi said the FBI planted a GPS device on his car and later confiscated it when a friend posted this photo online. (Credit: khaledthegypsy/REDDIT)" SNIPPET: "Yasir Afifi, a 20-year-old student and U.S.-born citizen found a GPS tracking device on his car. A friend posted pictures of the device, which resulted in the FBI coming by Afifi's Santa Clara, Calif., apartment to retrieve the surveillance equipment. It seems the FBI was tracking Afifi's movements..."

Defense officials in South Korea and military analysts elsewhere are expressing concern about what they call a new type of threat from Pyongyang. The North Koreans, according to South Korea's government, are now capable of disrupting GPS receivers, which are a critical component of modern military and civilian navigation.

Actor Tony Curtis Loved His iPhone So Much That He Was Buried With It While I was reading MSNBC's touching write up of Tony Curtis' funeral, something caught my attention. It was right there—right in the list of treasured items buried with the late actor: An iPhone.It's not really uncommon for individuals to request that some dear possessions be buried with them and I doubt that this is the first time one of those items was a gadget. But the fact that the shiny device seemed like it fit right in with all the other possessions shows how we're gradually...

Progress of waves through open sea sends vibrations that magnify with height up the entire atmospheric column. The signals of GPS satellites could be used to monitor tsunamis as they sweep across the ocean. In the most detailed study to date of the effect, scientists have shown that even though open ocean tsunami waves are only a few centimetres high, they are powerful enough to create atmospheric vibrations extending all the way to the ionosphere, 300 kilometres up in the atmosphere. The finding, the researchers hope, could hugely improve tsunami early-warning systems. In a study published online on 1 September...

Va. court upholds GPS tracking of suspect's vehicleBy THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: September 09, 2010 Richmond, Va. - The same GPS technology that motorists use to get directions can be used by police without a warrant to track the movements of criminal suspects on public streets, the Virginia Court of Appeals said yesterday. In a case that prompted warnings of Orwellian snooping by the government, the court unanimously ruled that Fairfax County police did nothing wrong when they planted a GPS device on the bumper of a registered sex offender's work van without obtaining a warrant. Police were investigating sexual...

A new ruling says that--in most cases--government and law agencies don't need a search warrant to track cell phones.Tuesday a federal appeals court in Philadelphia ruled that--in most cases--the FBI and other police agencies do not need a search warrant in order to track the location of cell phones used by Americans. The three-judge panel of the Third Circuit sided with the Obama Administration (pdf) in the belief that a signed search warrant--one based on a probable cause to suspect criminal activity--isn't necessary when obtaining logs from wireless carriers that depict the whereabouts of a cell phone. However the panel...

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway — and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements. That is the bizarre — and scary — rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government...

On Aug. 13, three men entered and burglarized a Bridgeview home in Northwest Houston. The residents of the house, Windi Youngblood, Corey Phelps, and baby daughter, slept undisturbed through the night. Suspects Jason Hamlin, Justin Hamlin, and Zachary Mckinzie, were caught by Precinct 4 constables less than 8 hours later. The constables found the suspects through an odd turn of events. The three men had been broadcasting their GPS coordinates the whole time. Phelps and Youngblood use a feature on their smartphones that link each phone to the other. “We started using this feature to help keep up with the...

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements. That is the bizarre - and scary - rule that now applies in California and eight other Western states. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which covers this vast jurisdiction, recently decided the government...

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go. This doesn't violate your Fourth Amendment rights, because you do not have any reasonable expectation of privacy in your own driveway - and no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking your movements.

PEABODY — If anybody should know not to take advice from Homer Simpson it's Mike Reiss. But he listened to the big goof anyway. "We came via a GPS (global positioning system) mistake," Reiss explained yesterday. "I have a Homer Simpson global positioning system. It speaks in the voice of Homer Simpson." Reiss, 50, and wife, Denise, after staying with friends in Wenham, were looking for the Peabody Essex Museum. They followed Homer's directions with some skepticism. "Are you sure, Homer?" they are apt to ask. And with reason. Homer took them to the City of Peabody instead of the...

Ruling that federal agents erred in attaching a satellite tracking device to a vehicle without a search warrant, a federal appeals court has reversed the life sentence of man accused of running a major Washington drug ring. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Friday found that the government's use of GPS technology to track defendant Antoine Jones' Jeep violated the Fourth Amendment. Civil liberties groups that aided in the appeal of Mr. Jones, whose case involved the largest cocaine seizure in city history, called the ruling an important legal victory for privacy rights....

Man Arrested In Mich. Charged In NC HomicideContreras Suspected Of Shooting Alamance County Man In Chest UPDATED: 2:06 pm EDT July 24, 2010 GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - A man was arrested in Michigan this week and charged with first-degree murder in connection with an Alamance County homicide. Michigan state police, in conjunction with the U.S. Marshal's Fugitive Task Force out of Grand Rapids, and detectives from Alamance County Sheriff's Office arrested Raul Zuniga Conteras, 34, Saturday morning. Contreras was charged in connection with a homicide that happened on Monday. Police said David Wayne Smith was shot in the chest on...