Should we really be surprised that people don't want to be tracked everywhere they go? Isn't my location also a matter of privacy? I wonder where you buy one of these jammers.
I saw the link ... and wouldn't waste my money since my cars don't have trackers (three are 1971 models that barely have an electric system). What I meant was that I could understand why people would want one of these devices.
Disabling the tracker in your own car is fine. However, that's not what the jammers do. They broadcast a signal that blocks GPS for everyone on a wide radius. To be able to guarantee no lock in a 10m radius means you have to interfere with GPS for at least half a km around you. It's absolutely not okay to wholesale block service to everyone near you because you want to be more private.
It is not necessary to interfere with GPS in a wider area to mask your own position. The GPS signal is very low power (below the noise floor). It does not take much effort to block it. For this reason, the in car maskers (aka jammers) will block signals over a wide area unless they are precisely engineered to stay localized. There are a lot of poorly engineered maskers out there. I study these maskers and how they affect WAAS for the FAA.
I'm not condoning this as a technique to remain "private" ... I'm simply stating that I understand why people are buying jammers and I agree that some of them should be allowed to have their privacy.
I'm not so sure about others. If you're driving a truck for a shipping company, I suspect it's their right to know where their equipment is.
What I don't understand is how a trucking company that has their unit jammed doesn't eventually figure that out and fire the driver.
[EDIT] The only thing I can think of is that the GPS is always recording, but only examined in the event of an accident. The driver can claim the unit was defective and not his fault, so there's no proof he was driving 90 in a 60 zone.
It's possible that early units weren't very reliable. If drivers started using jammers before the reliability improved than the company may just expect a high rate of failure.
The other option is that insurance companies and regulators want the GPS trackers installed, but the companies don't care as long as the deliveries get made.
There are limits on how many hours a driver is allowed to work, for safety reasons.
I can't think of anything that meets the hyperbolic claim, but I know some insurance companies have introduced driving monitors to assess how safe your driving is and adjust your premiums accordingly.
They're not blocking the signal from their own cars, but from their employer's. And possibly using it to cheat on their taxes as well.
They could probably put a stop to this by making jammer detectors and inspecting for them at weigh stations and then checking the logs on the GPS for anomalies. If the cops have a jammer detector, they can start pulling people over for having them.
If a few people lose their CDL, they should fall out of favor. These aren't very easy to hide, given that they have to broadcast to work. And if this pushes them to invent some other way to tamper with their GPS monitors, so much the better: it wouldn't cause nearly as much harm as these.
Tracking is different than just getting your own location. GPS receivers only receive data. You still need a radio or recording device to track (realtime or deferred) where you are or have been.
