[rafram]

Clickbait from 404 Media? Surely not!

The part they kept out of the headline:

> for use in distributing the keys for accessing the military GPS signals

It’s common knowledge that the military has access to a separate, encrypted, higher-precision GPS signal. “Numbers station” implies that they’re distributing unrelated encrypted information, but they’re not; it’s not surprising that GPS signals would be used to deliver information related to GPS, even if only military receivers have any use for it!

[stackghost]

>It’s common knowledge that the military has access to a separate, encrypted, higher-precision GPS signal.

The most militarily-valuable aspect of the military GPS signals is actually the anti-spoofing qualities, rather than the higher precision. Survey-grade GPS gear has been able to achieve centimetre-level precision from the regular civilian signals for several years now, using RF fuckery like tracking the phase angle and other techniques.

To be sure, you want the precision too. NATO countries have M982 Excalibur GPS-guided artillery rounds that are precise enough that you can select not just the building you want to hit but the specific window you want the round to enter.

But the primary benefit of the encrypted signal is that it provides cryptographic assurance that the signal is not spoofed and one can be confident that one's GPS-guided cruise missile or other munition is not being diverted off-course.

Nowadays the military GPS signal has moved from transmitting the legacy "P(Y) code", which is a Cold War-era design, to the "M code" which incorporates several decades' worth of lessons learned in terms of spoofing resistance, cryptographic authentication, etc. It's actually a really neat rabbit hole to climb down.

[05]

> has access to a separate, encrypted, higher-precision GPS signal.

That's not it, though. This is available on the consumer L1 band, and you can even read that info using a $5 Ublox receiver (UBX-RXM-SFRBX command).

[kotaKat]

Yeah, but the DAGRs out there hop around on both sets. You can run a DAGR without keys and it'll use civ GPS just fine. It'd make sense to have the hidden OTAR/OTAP running on a hidden chunk of L1 traffic.

https://www.baesystems.com/en/product/defense-advanced-gps-r...

[causal]

I don't think this qualifies as clickbait in the sense that the headline mismatches the contents. My experience with 404 Media is that they treat every article like they've just released the Pentagon Papers, so you just have to read with that in mind.

[SllX]

> My experience with 404 Media is that they treat every article like they've just released the Pentagon Papers

I think you’ve perfectly phrased exactly what it is that annoys me when I see a 404 Media headline. When it was a new shop, I stomached it more, but this is every single headline I ever see from them.

[DANmode]

Contrasting the tone of innocence the larger publications use around these institutions feels perfectly within a journalistic mandate.

[SllX]

Nobody is disputing that it is a legitimate choice. It is also legitimately off-putting.

If their audience is into it though, good for them.

[DANmode]

Honestly, I was surprised to see this take.

Their tone just makes me miss the original The Intercept and other used-to-be-heavy-hitters.

Were they also too punchy for you? (I sound possibly sarcastic, but am genuinely curious)

[SllX]

I read The Intercept rarely and never saw enough of them to form any kind of take on their “typical” headline-style. 404 Media has been popping off everywhere though—including here-since they launched.

This may sound pre-judgmental, but a headline is an advertisement & marketing for the article. A headline can get someone in that might otherwise have skipped the article, but it can just as easily dissuade people who might otherwise be interested in the subject matter.

[cryzinger]

For new and under-reported (or otherwise downplayed) stories, I think it's understandable and maybe even good. But when every single story has a breathless, scandalized headline, it gets exhausting fast, and it's hard for me to know what to pay attention to.

I remember last year 404 put out a clickbait-y story about the shitty "covert" websites that the CIA used to communicate with spies they'd recruited in Iran, even though it was old news at that point. If you only read the headline (as many people do...) you'd think it was a startling new development.

[DANmode]

> it's hard for me to know what to pay attention to.

If it’s a decent institution?

All of what they’re reporting on! =]

[dang]

(This comment was originally posted to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48414479, where the article was https://www.404media.co/the-u-s-military-quietly-turned-gps-.... We've since merged the threads.)