GPS and Mobile Devices
Mobile devices armed with GPS have greatly aided terrorist groups in planning and coordinating attacks, and are now an indispensable piece of equipment.
Reproduced from: wikimedia.org
GPS (Global Positioning System) is a satellite navigation system which allows the user to accurately obtain the latitude, longitude and altitude of their position anywhere in the world, at any time of the day. It was first developed by the U.S. Department of Defense to allow military units to know their exact location and the location of other units. GPS was instrumental in enabling the United States win the 1991 Gulf War. During the famous Operation Desert Storm, military vehicles relied on the system to navigate across the barren desert at night. It was only in 1996, with the signing of the Presidential Decision Directive, that GPS became accessible to users worldwide, free of direct charges (Grootscholten, 2008). Since then, GPS has become widely used in devices such as cars, airplanes and most notably in mobile phones. Although created with the purpose of assisting the military, GPS has now ironically been made to serve the ends of terrorism.
Reproduced from: hothardware.com
In the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, terrorists made use of satellite phones and GPS to attack several targets with deadly precision. As they approached Mumbai by sea, they steered the vessel using GPS on a satellite phone. During the attacks, the terrorists were constantly on their BlackBerrys, checking the police response via the Internet to direct their fire and cover their tracks, and using the GPS function to navigate around the city centre efficiently.