WEBVTT

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Something happened in the early
morning hours of May 2nd, 2000

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that had a profound effect
on the way our society operates.

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Ironically, hardly anyone noticed at the time.

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The change was silent, imperceptible,
unless you knew exactly what to look for.

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On that morning US president Bill Clinton

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ordered that a special switch be thrown

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in the orbiting satellites
of the global positioning system.

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Instantaneously, every civilian
GPS receiver around the globe

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went from errors the size
of a football field,

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to errors the size of a small room.

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It’s hard to overstate the effect that
this change in accuracy has had on us.

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Before this switch was thrown,

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we didn't have in-car navigation systems
giving turn-by-turn directions

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because back then GPS couldn’t tell you
what block you were on,

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let alone what street.

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For geolocation accuracy matters.

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And things have only improved
over the last 10 years,

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with more base stations,
more ground stations,

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better receivers and better algorithms.

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GPS can now not only tell you
what street you were on,

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but what part of the street.

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This level of accuracy has unleashed
a firestorm of innovation.

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In fact many of you navigated here today

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with the help of your TomTom
or your smart phone.

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Paper maps are becoming obsolete.

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We now stand on the verge of another
revolution in geolocation accuracy.

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What if I told you
that the two meter positioning

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that our current cell phones
and our TomToms give us

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is pathetic compared
to what we could be getting?

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For some time now it's been known
that if you pay attention

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to the Carrier Phase of the GPS signal,

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and if you have an Internet connection

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then you can go from meter
level to centimeter level,

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even millimeter level positioning.

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So why don't we have
this capability on our phones?

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Only, I believe, for a lack of imagination.

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Manufacturers haven't built
this carrier phase technique

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into their cheap GPS chips,
because they're not sure

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what the general public would do
with geolocations so accurate

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that you could pinpoint the wrinkles
in the palm of your hand.

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But you and I and other innovators,

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we can see the potential
in this next leap in accuracy.

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Imagine for example,
an augmented reality app

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that overlays a virtual world
to millimeter level precision

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on top of the physical world.

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I could build for you
a structure up here in 3-D,

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millimeter accurate, 
that only you could see,


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or my friends at home.

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So this level of positioning,
this is what we're looking for,

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and I believe that within
the next few years, I predict

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that this kind of hyper precise
carrier phase based positioning

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will become cheap and ubiquitous,

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and the consequences will be fantastic.

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The Holy Grail of course is the GPS dot.

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Do you remember the movie,
The Da Vinci Code?

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Here's Professor Langdon
examining a GPS dot,

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which his accomplice
tells him is a tracking device

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accurate within two feet
anywhere on the globe.

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But we know that 
in the world of nonfiction


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the GPS dot is impossible. Right?

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For one thing,
GPS doesn't work indoors,

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and for another,
they don't make devices quite this small,

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especially when those
devices have to relay

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their measurements back over a network.

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Well, these objections were
perfectly reasonable a few years ago,

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but things have changes.

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There's been a strong trend
toward miniaturization, better sensitivity.

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So much so that a few years ago
a GPS tracking device

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looked like this clunky box
to the left of the keys.

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Compare that with the device
released just months ago

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that's now packaged into something
the size of a key fob.

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And if you take a look 
at the state of the art


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for a complete GPS receiver,

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which is only a centimeter on a side
and more sensitive than ever,

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you realize that the GPS dot

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will soon move from fiction to nonfiction.

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Imagine what we could do
with a world full of GPS dots.

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It's not just that you'll never lose
your wallet or your keys anymore,

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or your child when you're at Disneyland.

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You'll buy GPS dots in bulk,

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and you'll stick them on
everything you own

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worth more than a few tens of dollars.

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I couldn't find my shoes 
one recent morning,

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and as usual had to ask
my wife if she had seen them.

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But I shouldn't have to bother my wife
with that kind of triviality.

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I should be able ask my house
where my shoes are.

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(Laughter)

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Those of you who have made
the switch to Gmail

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remember how refreshing it was 
to go from organizing all of your email

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to simply searching it.

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The GPS dot will do
the same for our possessions.

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Now of course there is
a flip side to the GPS dot.

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I was in my office some months back
and got a telephone call.

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The woman on the other end of the line,
we'll call her Carol, was panicked.

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Apparently, an ex-boyfriend
of Carol's from California

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had found her in Texas
and was following her around.

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So you might ask at this point,
why she's calling you?

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(Chuckle)
Well, so did I.

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But it turned out there was
a technical twist to Carol's case.

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Every time her ex-boyfriend would show up,

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at the most improbable times,
in the most improbable locations,

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he was carrying an open laptop.

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And over time Carol realized

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that he had planted
a GPS tracking device on her car.

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So she was calling me
for help to disable it.

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"Well, you should go to a good mechanic
and have them look at your car," I said.

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"I already have," she told me.

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"He didn't see anything obvious

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and he said he'd have to take
the car apart piece by piece."

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"Well then, you'd better go
to the police." I said.

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"I already have," she replied.

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"They're not sure this rises
to the level of harassment,

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and they're not set up
technically to find the device."

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"Okay, what about the FBI?"

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"I've talked to them too."
(Laughter)

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And the same story.

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We then talked about her coming to my lab

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and us performing a radio sweep
of her car.

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But I wasn't even sure that would work,

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given that some of these devices
are configured to only transmit

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when they're inside safe zones
or when the car is moving.

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So, there we were, Carol isn't the first,
and certainly won't be the last

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to find herself in this kind
of fearsome environment,

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worrisome situation,
caused by GPS tracking.

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In fact, as I looked into her case,
I discovered to my surprise,

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that it's not clearly illegal for you or me

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to put a tracking device
on someone else's car.

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The Supreme Court ruled last month


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that a policeman has to get a warrant

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if he wants to do prolonged tracking.

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But the law isn't clear about
civilians doing this to one another.

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So it's not just Big Brother
we have to worry about,

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but Big Neighbor.
(Laughter)

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There is one alternative that Carol
could have taken, very effective.

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It's called the Wave Bubble.

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It's an open source GPS jammer
developed by Limor Fried,

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a graduate student at MIT.

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And Limor calls it, "A tool for reclaiming
our personal space."

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With a flip of the switch,
you create a bubble around you

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within which GPS signals can't reside,


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they get drowned out by the bubble.

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And Limor designed this, in part

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because like Carol,
she felt threatened by GPS tracking.

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Then she posted her design to the web,

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and if you don't have time
to build your own, you can buy one.

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Chinese manufacturers now sell 
thousands of nearly identical devices

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on the Internet.

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So you might be thinking,
the wave bubble sounds great,

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I should have one,
it might come in handy

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if somebody ever puts
a tracking device on my car.

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But you should be aware that its use 
is very much illegal in the United States.

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And why is that?
Well because it's not a bubble at all.

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Its jamming signals don't stop
at the edge of your personal space

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or the edge of your car.

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They go on to jam innocent GPS receivers
for miles around you.

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(Laughter)

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Now, if you're Carol or Limor,


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or someone who feels threatened 
by GPS tracking,

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it might not feel wrong
to turn on a wave bubble.

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But in fact,
the results can be disastrous.

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Imagine, for example,
you're the Captain of a cruise ship,

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trying to make your way
through a thick fog,

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and some passenger in the back
turns on a wave bubble.

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All of a sudden your GPS
readout goes blank,

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and now it's just you and the fog,

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and whatever you can
pull off the radar system,

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if you remember how to work it.

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They don't update or upkeep
light houses anymore,

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and LORAN, the only backup to GPS,
was discontinued last year.

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Our modern society has
a special relationship with GPS.

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We're almost blindly reliant on it.

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It's built deeply into
our systems and infrastructure.

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Some call it, "the invisible utility."

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So turning on a wave bubble
might not just cause inconvenience,

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it might be deadly.

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But as it turns out,
for purposes of protecting your privacy,

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at the expense of general GPS reliability,

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there's something even more potent
and more subversive than a wave bubble,

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and that is a GPS spoofer.

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The idea behind the GPS spoofer is simple.

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Instead of jamming the GPS signals,

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you fake them, you imitate them.

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And if you do it right, 
the device you're attacking


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doesn't even know it's being spoofed.

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So let me show you how this works.

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In any GPS receiver there's a peak inside

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that corresponds to the authentic signals,

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these three red dots
represent the tracking points

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that try to keep themselves
centered on that peak.

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But if you send in a fake GPS signal,
another peak pops up,

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and if you can get
these two peaks perfectly aligned

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the tracking points
can't tell the difference,

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and they get hijacked
by the stronger counterfeit signal,

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with the authentic peak 
getting forced off.

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At this point, the game is over.

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The fake signals now
completely control this GPS receiver.

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So is this really possible?

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Can someone really manipulate

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the timing and positioning 
of a GPS receiver

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just like that, with a spoofer?

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Well, the short answer is yes.

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The key is that civil GPS
signals are completely open,

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they have no encryption,
they have no authentication.

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They're wide open vulnerable
to a kind of spoofing attack.

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Even so, up until very recently,
nobody worried about GPS spoofers.

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People figured that it would be
too complex or too expensive

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for some hacker to build one.

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But I and a friend of mine
from graduate school,


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we didn't see it that way.

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We knew it wasn't going to be so hard,

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and we wanted to be the first to build one

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so we could get out
in front of the problem

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and help protect against GPS spoofing.

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I remember vividly the week
it all came together.

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We built it at my home,


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which means that I got a little extra help

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from my 3-year old son, Ramón.

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Here's Ramón looking 
for a little attention from Dad that week.

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(Laughter)

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At first, the spoofer was just
a jumble of cables and computers,

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though we eventually got it 
packaged into a small box.

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Now the Doctor Frankenstein moment!


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When the spoofer finally came alive,

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and I glimpsed its awful potential.

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Came late one night when I tested
the spoofer against my iPhone.

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Let me show you some actual footage
from that very first experiment.

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I had come to completely trust
this little blue dot,

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and its reassuring blue halo.

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They seem to speak to me, they'd say,


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"Here you are! Here you are!"

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(Laughter)

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"And you can trust us."

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So, something felt
very wrong about the world.

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It was a sense almost of betrayal.

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When this little blue dot
started at my house,

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and went running off toward
the North, leaving me behind,

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I wasn't moving.

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What I then saw
in this little moving blue dot,

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was the potential for chaos.

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I saw airplanes and ships
veering off course,

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with the Captain learning only too late
that something was wrong.

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I saw the GPS derived timing
of the New York Stock Exchange

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being manipulated by hackers.

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You can scarcely imagine
the kind of havoc you could cause

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if you knew what you were doing
with a GPS spoofer.

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There is though,

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one redeeming feature of the GPS spoofer.

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It's the ultimate weapon against
an invasion of GPS dots.

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Imagine, for example,
you're being tracked.

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Well, you can play the tracker for a fool,

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pretending to be at work,
when you're really on vacation.

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Or if you're Carol,
you could lure your ex-boyfriend

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into some empty parking lot
where the police are waiting for him.

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So I'm fascinated by this conflict,
a looming conflict,

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between privacy on the one hand,

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and the need for
a clean radio spectrum, on the other.

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We simply cannot tolerate
GPS jammers and spoofers.

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And yet, given the lack
of effective legal means

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for protecting our privacy
from the GPS dot,

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can you really blame people 
for wanting to turn them on,

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for wanting to use them?

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I hold out hope that we'll be able to


00:14:39.760 --> 00:14:43.084
reconcile this conflict with some sort of,

00:14:43.084 --> 00:14:47.442
some yet uninvented technology.

00:14:48.469 --> 00:14:51.551
But meanwhile, grab some popcorn,


00:14:51.551 --> 00:14:53.834
because things are going
to get interesting.

00:14:53.834 --> 00:14:56.394
Within the next few years many of you


00:14:56.394 --> 00:14:59.092
will be the proud owner of a GPS dot.

00:14:59.092 --> 00:15:01.514
Maybe you'll have
a whole bag full of them.

00:15:01.514 --> 00:15:04.789
You'll never lose track
of your things again.

00:15:04.789 --> 00:15:09.334
The GPS dot will fundamentally
reorder your life.

00:15:09.334 --> 00:15:12.515
But will you be able
to resist the temptation

00:15:12.515 --> 00:15:15.311
to track your fellow men?

00:15:15.311 --> 00:15:18.020
Or will you be able to resist
the temptation to turn on

00:15:18.020 --> 00:15:20.189
a GPS spoofer, or a wave bubble

00:15:20.189 --> 00:15:22.630

to protect your own privacy?

00:15:22.630 --> 00:15:26.441
So as usual,
what we see just beyond the horizon

00:15:26.441 --> 00:15:29.750
is full of promise and peril.

00:15:29.750 --> 00:15:33.004
It'll be fascinating to see
how this all turns out.

00:15:33.004 --> 00:15:34.564
Thanks.

00:15:34.564 --> 00:15:36.097
(Applause)