Where Are We? - GPS Declassified: From Smart Bombs to Smartphones - page 152

cutters. 23 Georgia reduced the number it prints from 1.7 million to 1.4 million
between 2004 and 2009 . 24 Iowa in 2012 cut the number of state road maps it
printed from 1.4 million to eight hundred thousand, saving about $240,000 . 25
aaa and Rand McNally acknowledge they are printing fewer maps but decline
to give numbers. 26 Insurance companies have an interest in public perceptions
of gps reliability. Many are actively promoting gps tracking devices designed
to record driving behavior and reward safer drivers with lower premiums.
The Bell on the Cat
While some drivers lost patience with their navigation devices, many others
were losing the units themselves—to thieves. As sales rose, so did car burglar-
ies. The fbi reported that gps thefts from vehicles jumped 30 percent between
2000 and 2004. 27 Even as thefts of automobiles plunged 13 percent in 2008,
car burglaries increased 2 percent. 28 Philadelphia police said gps units
accounted for 20 percent of all thefts from vehicles. 29 Dublin, Ireland, police
put the figure at 25 percent. 30 Spanish officials blamed gps units and cell phones
for car burglaries having “skyrocketed.” 31 Melbourne, Australia, police recorded
more than six hundred gps units stolen from vehicles every month in 2008 . 32
Bethesda, Maryland, police echoed an admonition to car owners that was prom-
inent in gps-related theft stories: leaving suction-cup mounts on car wind-
shields was a red flag for thieves. 33 Media reports of this kind also seem to have
decreased. Drivers may have learned to be more careful. More likely the decline
is because gps navigation has migrated to smartphones, which people tend to
take with them when they leave the vehicle, and to a growing number of in-
dash systems, which are less prone to “smash and grab” break-ins. Industry
analysts predict factory-installed navigation systems will overtake pnd ship-
ments by 2015. 34 However, a mid-2012 report highlights the danger of car own-
ers programming their address into gps systems as “home.” A car thief drove
his victim's Lexus to her house, used the garage opener to let himself in, bur-
glarized the home, and abandoned the vehicle nearby. 35
When thieves steal pnds, the odds of recovery are slim. Stolen or lost smart-
phones are another matter. The gps infrastructure by itself cannot track receiv-
ers using the signals; tracking requires additional circuitry to transmit the
calculated coordinates to some other monitoring system. As discussed in the
preceding chapter, that technology is built into phones to meet the fcc's man-
date for locating mobile 911 callers, and it has migrated into tablets and some
laptop computers. It enables apps that owners of stolen or lost smartphones—