Consumer GPS jammer interfering with the Newark Liberty ground-based augmentation system (2012)
What happened
On 4 August 2012 an FCC Enforcement Bureau field officer identified a pickup truck as the source of interference to the GPS reference receivers of the Ground-Based Augmentation System then undergoing pre-deployment testing at Newark Liberty International Airport, the day after the FAA complained of the interference. The driver, Gary P. Bojczak, was operating a consumer GPS jammer in his company-supplied vehicle to defeat the GPS-based fleet-tracking system his employer had installed in it; he surrendered the device, and the agent confirmed the unauthorised emissions ceased once it was switched off. The Newark GBAS incorporates Honeywell's SmartPath SLS-4000 and had received operational approval the previous September. On 2 August 2013 the FCC released a Notice of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture of $31,875 (FCC 13-106) for violations of Sections 301, 302(b) and 333 of the Communications Act and Sections 2.803(g) and 15.1(c) of the Commission's rules, finding that the conduct caused harmful interference to the GBAS installation, compromising technical precision and accuracy and interrupting its pre-deployment testing and calibration. The matter was settled by consent decree in 2016 at $2,360 payable with the balance suspended.
The one record in this GNSS set with no attribution uncertainty: a named individual identified by a federal regulator through direct field measurement, who admitted owning and operating the jammer when Port Authority police stopped his truck at the airport gate, and surrendered the device to the FCC agent on the spot. The Commission proposed a $31,875 forfeiture a year later in a Notice of Apparent Liability, adjusting the interference component upward 50 percent and then cutting the total 25 percent to credit the voluntary relinquishment. Intent is the notable feature: the jammer was bought to defeat employer vehicle tracking and the effect on the airport was collateral, which is what makes the case the standard illustration of consumer-jammer risk to aviation infrastructure. primary_segment is `ground` rather than `user` because the affected equipment is airport augmentation infrastructure, not an end user's own receiver.
Attack vector
A consumer GPS jammer, available online for under $100, operated inside a moving vehicle on a public road within range of the airport's surveyed GPS reference receivers.
Operational impact
Harmful interference to the GBAS reference receivers at Newark Liberty International Airport, compromising technical precision and accuracy and interrupting the pre-deployment testing and calibration of the system. The system was in test rather than operational service and no aircraft was endangered. Interference ceased immediately when the jammer was switched off.
Affected segments
ground, user, link
Disclosed
2013-08-02
SPARTA techniques evidenced
Each row is a technique this record evidences, with the reasoning and the source that attests to it.
What relationship, confidence, and evidence mean on the rows below
- Relationship
What kind of link this is between the technique and the target.
Mitigates: the target actively prevents, detects, or recovers from the technique.
Addresses: the target governs the technique or is relevant to it, without interdicting it. Most governance and policy obligations sit here.
Triggers obligation: the technique occurring is what triggers the duty the target imposes.
Relates to: related to the technique, but the target neither interdicts nor governs it. Used sparingly.
- Confidence
How strongly the source supports this mapping, not how severe the technique is.
High: the source supports the mapping squarely.
Moderate: supported, with a qualification such as a cross-tactic reading that stays operationally sound.
Low: the source reaches the technique only in part.
- Evidence
How close to the source text the mapping was made.
Direct: a verbatim excerpt of the cited source was read against the technique, and the rationale argues from that excerpt.
Derived: the mapping follows from the source's scope or structure, with no on-point excerpt addressing the technique.
Inferred: reached by composition through another framework, or by domain reasoning the source does not support on its face.
A consumer GPS jammer radiating in the GNSS band prevented the surveyed GPS reference receivers of the Newark GBAS from tracking the signals they exist to observe, which the FCC found to be harmful interference to that installation. That is EX-0016.03's own description of raising the noise floor in GNSS bands so satellite navigation signals are not acquired or tracked, and its consequence clause about degraded or unavailable PNT is written receiver-agnostically. The technique's further observation that modest jammers inside the antenna field of view produce outsized effects and that mobile emitters create intermittent outages describes this event exactly.
IMP-0002 is temporary impairment of the use of or access to a system. The FCC found the interference interrupted the GBAS pre-deployment testing and calibration, and the field record is that the unauthorised emissions ceased and the interference ended the moment the jammer was removed and switched off. Temporary and completely reversible, which is SPARTA's stated distinction between IMP-0002 and IMP-0003.
Considered and not mapped
These techniques were considered for this record because a source, a related record or SPARTA's own catalogue pointed at them. Each was read against what the sources say and not mapped. The reason is given in full.
This is where SPARTA's own bibliography puts the incident, and it is rejected deliberately. EX-0013.02 is a variant of EX-0013 Flooding, whose scope is overwhelming a communication or processing path by injecting traffic the system cannot absorb. Its RF-layer clause does describe broadband interference driving AGC and clock recovery to hunt, which is a fair description of what a jammer does to a receiver, so this is not a frivolous citation. But EX-0016.03 names this exact behaviour and this exact band, and the prefer-the-specific rule applies. Flagged for the editor in
gnss-incidents-gap-analysis.md.The system was impaired and its test campaign interrupted, then restored in full the moment the jammer was switched off. SPARTA reserves IMP-0003 for denying use entirely. Rejected on the same reasoning as in
gnss-interference-european-aviation-2022-2026.The technique is renting time on commercial ground networks or ground-station-as-a-service to reach a spacecraft. The equipment here is a sub-$100 consumer jammer in a pickup truck.
Sources
The published accounts this record rests on. The tier is SafeMode Space's own assessment of the source, and the reason for it is given beside it. What the tiers mean and how they are assigned: the source tiers.
A source is listed when a mapped technique rests on it, or when it disputes the account. One the curators read but neither cited nor recorded as disputing the record is not listed, so an absence here means neither is true rather than that nobody looked.
Tier 1: The enforcing regulator's own enforcement document, with docket number, adopted and released dates, the statutory and rule sections violated and the forfeiture amount.
Tier 2: Specialist GNSS engineering trade publication quoting the FCC document directly and adding the system detail (SmartPath SLS-4000, prior operational approval) that the enforcement summary does not carry.
- N.J. Man In A Jam, After Illegal GPS Device Interferes With Newark Liberty OperationsTrade presscorroborating
Tier 3: General-interest local television news reporting the enforcement action, with the rounded $32,000 figure rather than the docketed amount and no technical detail on the affected system.
Every source SafeMode Space reproduces, and on what terms: sources and attribution.