These days, tech firms fear attacks from hacking groups like Anonymous operating remotely from locations around the globe. However, back in 1992, a couple of activists tried to stop GPS technology at the source by destroying satellites with axes.
It's hard to imagine a world without GPS (Global Positioning System) technology today. Google Maps and its competitors have made asking for directions virtually redundant. In 1992, far from being a personal aid, GPS was something that the U.S. military used to target missiles in the first Gulf War.
One of the activists told The Atlantic that the GPS attack was motivated by a desire to stop a military weapon rather than a surveillance tool that would ultimately be used to track everyone on the planet.
On May 10, 1992, the ax-wielding Keith Kjoller and Peter Lumsdaine broke into the Rockwell International facility in Seal Beach, Calif.,where U.S. military satellites were being built. Lumsdaine managed to hit one satellite more than 60 times and cause an estimated $2 million in damage before being arrested. The pair pleaded guilty and received reduced sentences of 18 months and two years, respectively.
The men, who called themselves the "The Harriet Tubman-Sarah Connor Brigade," after the leader of the Underground Railroad and the Terminator movie character, were targeting the Navigation Satellite Timing And Ranging (NAVSTAR) program, which was responsible for developing GPS. Even today, Lumsdaine regards GPS as a military tool, describing it as "military in its origins, military in its goals, military in its development and [is still] controlled by the military."
NAVSTAR was launched in 1973, and the first GPS-enabled satellites started going into orbit in 1980. However, the world only became aware of the term during the first Gulf War as it was widely used in the media.
Lumsdaine's ax strokes were an attempt to destroy something he saw as a weapon that caused civilian deaths.
"Most of the civilian casualties of Operation Desert Storm came after the war because the infrastructure was targeted; the water, the electric lines, the generating stations," he said. The activist admitted that using GPS as a surveillance tool wasn't really in their minds at the time.
Lumsdaine has spent a career researching robotic warfare while working for the National Mobilization for Survival, the Resource Center for Nonviolence and, surprisingly, even the U.S. Department of Energy. He sees the drone programs in the the Middle East as a continuation of NAVSTAR, but it's unlikely there will be another ax attack from Lumsdaine or anyone else anytime soon. Not only has modern security (aided by GPS satellites) made physical attacks more difficult, but in today's networked technology age, physically attacking a single node doesn't do much damage to the system.
Photo: NASA | Flickr
