When GPS Takes You Down The Wrong Path

Mashable is reporting that a team of university students from University of Texas at Austin were able to spoof the GPS receivers on an $80 million yacht with false signals and make it veer off course without anyone even noticing!

I remember a couple of years ago, I was heading to an offsite meeting for work. 

It was planned for a location that I wasn't extremely familiar with.

Of course, I turned on my GPS device in the car and set the destination.

It was a cold snowy day--the roads were iced--and it was already treacherous driving. 

But I followed the GPS directions to a T.

I ended up in someone's backyard--at a dead end--practically in the middle of a cornfield. 

I'm thinking to myself Crap!--what type of crazy GPS is this? 

Thank G-d, I had my smartphone in my pocket and I opened up the GPS app on it and set the destination again. 

Sure enough, it takes me off and running to the meeting location--about 10 minutes away!

Some things I learnt:

1) OMG, we are so very dependent on our technology; with technology gone wrong, I was stuck in nowhere land USA; with it right--I got out of there and to the correct location and thank G-d. 

2) GPS is a capability that is critical for everything from getting us to where we need to go to getting our missiles to hit on target. Take away or mess with our GPS and we end up missing the mark--potentially big time and with devastating consequences. 

3) Always have a backup, plan B. One GPS can be wrong as in this case, while the other GPS was correct. Redundancy and contingency planning is a must have, period. 

4) When you're heading down the wrong road (or you're off course in international waters), man up and admit it and make a course correction. You don't win any brownie points for continuing to drive into the cornfields. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

When GPS Takes You Down The Wrong Path

Analyzing The Law

So I am back in school AGAIN (I'm a life-long learner), augmenting my not so slow-paced job.

Let's just say that at this point, I recognize that the more I know, the more I don't know anything. 

The class that I am taking now is Cyberlaw, and while I did take law in business school--many moons ago--that was more focused on contracts and business organizations. 

This class looks interesting from the perspective of the legal and regulatory structure to deal with and fight cybercrime, -terrorism, and -war.

One interesting thing that I already learned was a technique for evaluating legal cases called IRAC, which stands for:

- Issues--the underlying legal matters that the case is addressing.

- Rules--what legal precedents can be applied.

- Analysis--whether those rules apply or not, in this case.

- Conclusion--rendering an opinion on the case.

This is a structured way to analyze any legal case. 

Of course, before you do these, you have to look at the facts--so that is the very first section. 

The problem with that is then you have F-IRAC and that can definitely be taken the wrong way. ;-)

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Analyzing The Law