The data is taken from aircraft [EDIT: not airlines; see traceroute66's comment], so it doesn't give full coverage of the world, but it does include other satellite navigation systems aside from just GPS. Looks like the jammed/interfered areas are:
* A large part of Eastern Europe around Ukraine is missing data, and there are many jammed/interfered areas around it, including the southern coast of the Black Sea and parts of Poland and the Baltic. Part of the Baltic Sea off the coast of Kaliningrad are also jammed/interfered.
* Part of Germany near Berlin, possibly part of the Ukraine-related jamming/interference?
* A large part of the eastern Mediterranean and some of the Middle East around Gaza.
* A small area on the India-Pakistan border near Punjab and Lahore.
* Two medium-sized areas in western Myanmar.
* Two small areas in New Guinea with a gap in the data between them, spanning the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea border.
* Two small areas in western Australia.
* A small area on the US-Mexico border.
* A dot in southern China with some gaps in the data around it near the border with Vietnam.
Ukraine, Gaza, and Myanmar all have major conflicts going on. Other comments have suggested that the US-Mexico interference might be related to drug cartels. The India-Pakistan border is a longstanding point of tension. Not sure what (if anything) is going on in New Guinea and Australia.
The jamming/interference in India-Pakistan, US-Mexico, and China all went away in the last 6 hours -- they're only visible in the 24-hour data.
So how should I interpret this? The map lacks geopolitical boundaries, so it's hard to interpret.
There looks like a big hole of no data over Ukraine, where I'd most expect GPS jamming, but I suppose there are no civilian flights either. Maybe they could setup an GPS observation station on the ground at a surveyed point to get data there.
There's a big red blob over Turkey, is that maybe the southern edge of the reach of Russian jammers in the Black sea?
There's also a big red blob over the eastern Mediterranean. Is that Israel? I'm not so sure though, because it's not centered on Israel and parts of Israel proper are green on the map. I also assume they're heavy users of GPS, so wouldn't want to jam it.
There's a red blob in Southeast Asia, and that looks like Myanmar, where there's a civil war right now.
There's a little red blob over what looks like Kashmir.
This is deeper level of stupid. They take data, then throw in random junk and claim there is no signal in data.
When you look at each continent separately, then there is clear pattern except in Africa. It is sad but expected. There are also 3 clear and explainable outliers: Israel, Mongolia and Malaysia. Take them out and Asia has also clear signal.
The map I directed to you was apparantly an enhanced one from the NYT; here's one with many more details figured in: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/17/world/asia/malaysia-airlin... although I wouldn't treat those boundaries as gospel, there's likely more slop in the real estimates derived from the satellite.
It doesn't work well (graphically) if you choose eg, something in australia and something in the US. Shows the Australia flight travelling West across all of africa (when it actually travels northeast, across the ocean)
> "The table at right shows the US including Alaska and Hawaii, btw. And while not listing Eastern Europe (dark blue in the map) it adds many others unused in the map: Mexico, Peru, New Guinea, New Zealand, Nepal and Bangladesh!"
Big part of Europe is missing (Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Kavkaz...). But for some reason it includes asian part of Turkey, islands, part of south america... ;-)
It's a little weird looking at e.g., Central Africa and seeing no maps. Maybe they chose locations based on population? Either way, would be nice to fix this, as there are places with data available.
It's pretty shocking. I checked near some Apple commuter stations (where they presumably have employees living and actively using the service / have access to good data) and noticed it was missing entire parks and roads.
The situation on other countries is much worse though. Some countries are missing entire islands. In Mongolia, they don't have province (aimag) borders, and some provinces are even missing labels for their capitals! Worse, there's sparse recognition of district (sum) labels, but some of them seem to have recognized the sum centers as distinct towns, butchered the transliteration, and then marked them before the aimag capital, as happened with "Hovsgol" (Khövsgöl), Dornogovi.
I went to https://www.starlink.com/map to see coverage you can see that dark areas marked by political boundaries, not physical: Venezuela, Cuba, China, Russia, Makes you think.
* A large part of Eastern Europe around Ukraine is missing data, and there are many jammed/interfered areas around it, including the southern coast of the Black Sea and parts of Poland and the Baltic. Part of the Baltic Sea off the coast of Kaliningrad are also jammed/interfered.
* Part of Germany near Berlin, possibly part of the Ukraine-related jamming/interference?
* A large part of the eastern Mediterranean and some of the Middle East around Gaza.
* A small area on the India-Pakistan border near Punjab and Lahore.
* Two medium-sized areas in western Myanmar.
* Two small areas in New Guinea with a gap in the data between them, spanning the Indonesia-Papua New Guinea border.
* Two small areas in western Australia.
* A small area on the US-Mexico border.
* A dot in southern China with some gaps in the data around it near the border with Vietnam.
Ukraine, Gaza, and Myanmar all have major conflicts going on. Other comments have suggested that the US-Mexico interference might be related to drug cartels. The India-Pakistan border is a longstanding point of tension. Not sure what (if anything) is going on in New Guinea and Australia.
The jamming/interference in India-Pakistan, US-Mexico, and China all went away in the last 6 hours -- they're only visible in the 24-hour data.
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