Going Mainstream - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 146

or two before the attack to capture the coordinates on a gps unit. 186 While the
official timeline of his travels makes this theory problematic, it does not rule
out the use of portable gps receivers at another time by him or others for that
purpose.
Authorities reconstructed the movements and activities of all nineteen
hijackers and those of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called twentieth hijacker.
He was arrested on immigration charges August 17, 2001, after instructors at
a flight school in Minnesota became suspicious. Moussaoui proved to be a key
to unraveling the wider plot, and he was later tried, convicted, and sentenced
to life in prison. The fbi pieced together financial transactions, physical evi-
dence, and eyewitness accounts confirming multiple purchases of gps units,
cockpit instrument diagrams, operating manuals, maps, video simulations of
jetliner operations, and varied simulator and airborne flight lessons. This evi-
dence figured prominently in the Moussaoui indictment and trial. 187 Prosecu-
tors revealed that he had emailed both Garmin and Magellan to ask whether
he could convert a street navigation unit for use in a plane. 188
This type of publicity produced anxiety about gps. U.S. News & World Report
titled an article about the potential for good and evil uses of gps “A Jekyll and
Hyde System.” 189 Flying airplanes into buildings seemed an unexpected ful-
fillment of military officials' worries about a “poor man's cruise missile” a
decade before. Many expected the government to reactivate Selective Avail-
ability; others suggested restricting gps receiver sales, but a Forbes writer lik-
ened that to putting toothpaste back in the tube. 190 Analysts calculated that
the civilian gps market had grown to $14 billion a year and could reach $20
billion by 2004. 191 Most experts saw the path forward in terms of exercising
greater dexterity in using the technology. Some envisioned programming “vir-
tual no-ly zones” into flight management systems to prevent hijackers— or
regular pilots, for that matter—from flying where a plane should not go. 192
President George W. Bush, in a September 27, 2001, speech at Chicago's O'Hare
Airport, indicated the government was studying ways for air traffic controllers
to override cockpit controls and land planes by remote control when neces-
sary. 193 Pilots resisted such approaches, and tighter security coupled with hard-
ened cockpit doors addressed those concerns. However, remotely controlled
aircraft soon appeared in the skies over Afghanistan in the form of unmanned
Predator drones, and the use of drones has proliferated.
The 9/11 attacks prompted reexamination of the approach undergirding
President Clinton's decision to deactivate Selective Availability—namely,