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Comment by tyho | Hacker News Reader

Says the USA, thankfully the author is not based there. That being said, the USA does seem to think many of its laws apply all over the globe.

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Incorrect.

The relevant agreement is the Missile Technology Control Regime, an informal partnership between 34 countries. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Technology_Control_Regi...

Unlocked GPS receivers are classified as dual-use missile-related components under category II, item 11, section A.3: http://www.mtcr.info/english/MTCR-April2011-Technical-Annex....

  b. Designed or modified for airborne applications and having any of the following: 
    1. Capable of providing navigation information at speeds in excess of 600 m/s; 
    2. Employing decryption, designed or modified for military or 
    governmental services, to gain access to GNSS secure signal/data; or
    3. Being specially designed to employ anti-jam features (e.g. null steering 
    antenna or electronically steerable antenna) to function in an 
    environment of active or passive countermeasures.

Huh, I should have checked that first. How well do you think you could argue that since the treaty did not specify what reference frame you were supposed to use to calculate the 600 m/s limit, you decided to use the reference frame of the receiver and therefore no limit is required because the speed is always 0? I would have thought GPS people most of all would have understood this problem \s.

My crystal ball tells me that the judge would find your argument very amusing, but not substantive.

Unfortunately many receivers have a (speed > X || altitude > Y) check when, IIRC, the law only requires (I don't see the altitude part in your quote) (speed > X && altitude > Y). I think the altitude limit was 20 km or 25 km. Anyways, it is a pain for people who want to put a receiver on a high altitude balloon. I was able to... find... a modified firmware for my SIRF receiver but I have been to afraid to flash it. Besides, I don't even know if the receiver has the "bad" logic. I've been jonesing to make a SDR GPS simulator that generates a signal that I can feed directly into the antenna port on the receiver to test high altitude functionality.

MTCR is an informal agreement, not a treaty. Its provisions are actually implemented by laws in the member nations-- in the US, that's the International Traffic In Arms Regulations Act. (ITAR) ITAR Category XV, Section c:

  Global Positioning System (GPS) receiving equipment specifically 
  designed, modified or configured for military use; or GPS receiving 
  equipment with any of the following characteristics:
    1. Designed for encryption or decryption (e.g., Y-Code) of GPS 
       precise positioning service (PPS) signals;
    2. Designed for producing navigation results above 60,000 feet 
       altitude and at 1,000 knots velocity or greater;

So the US limit isn't even in metric units! Consulting my psychic powers, since I haven't bothered to dig up the laws for each member nation, I predict that each nation implements MTCR slightly differently, some using the word AND, some using the word OR. Since a GPS manufacturer wants to sell worldwide, they would have to use the strictest limits possible.

He might want to visit the USA some time.

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