I stopped counting jammer websites when I got to 100

[Perfect Jammer]

We heard from our friend Charles Curry of Chronos Technology over the long weekend. He had a “yes and” to last week’s post about a jammer company with a new product line. – Full disclosure, Chronos has long be an RNTF corporate member.

Charles is semi-retired but still keeps an eye on the jammer market.

He and Chronos have quite the history detecting GNSS interference and recommending ways to mitigate it. They have worked with police departments advised governments, and published several papers.

Their “Sentinel Project – Report on GNSS Vulnerabilities” was issued in 2014. Most of its findings and recommendations are as pertinent today as they were seven years ago.

Here is Charles’ list of 100 active websites selling GNSS/ GPS jamming equipment, and a list of over 200 that used to do so, but that have links that appear inactive.

Charles said there are more sites, he just stopped when he got to 100. – Yeah, a hundred ought to make the point reasonably well…

FCC investigates Amazon over alleged marketing of wireless signal jammers

The FCC is the federal agency that has the authority to enforce the law on this, and establish and enforce supporting regulations.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) says it is taking action to enforce the law against marketing, selling, and using wireless jammers, including those that target GPS/GNSS. While reports do not mention anything about spoofing, it is against the law also.

What Else to Know:

• While news reports do not mention anything about the FCC addressing spoofing, that is against the law also.
• Unfortunately, over the last 20 years the FCC’s enforcement bureau has been greatly reduced in size while the incidents of accidental (also not allowed) and intentional interference with GPS has greatly increased.
• While it is illegal to market, sell, and use jamming devices, they are not illegal to own.
• The U.S. does not have a systematic way to detect interference with GPS/GNSS signals. The 2022 interference event at Denver lasted 33 hours before it was geo-located and terminated. The event at Dallas the same year lasted for 24 hours and the source was never located.
• We looked for the original statement from the FCC spokesperson, but were unable to find it on the FCC site. It looks as though it was made directly to NBC in response to their inquiry.