# GPS The Global Positioning System is a constellation of satellites, operated by the US Space Force, that broadcasts timing signals a receiver uses to calculate its own position anywhere on Earth. A phone's GPS chip is a [[Sensor]] that listens passively to these signals — GPS itself does not "track" you or transmit your location; it only computes where the device is. (Other nations run their own systems — Russia's GLONASS, the EU's Galileo, China's BeiDou — and modern chips use all of them, collectively "GNSS.") Originally built for the US military in the Cold War, GPS was opened to civilian use and became invisible infrastructure under navigation, ride-hailing, logistics, agriculture, and financial timestamping. ## Why it matters here GPS is where a benign sensor becomes a surveillance instrument the moment its output is logged and shared — and naming the distinction matters. The location *fix* is computed privately on the device; the surveillance happens downstream, when apps, operating systems, and the network transmit and store that location. That data feeds two streams the vault tracks: - **[[Surveillance Capitalism]]** — the location-data economy, in which apps harvest precise movement histories and sell them to data brokers, who resell to advertisers and, notably, to government agencies. US immigration and law-enforcement bodies have purchased commercial location data specifically to sidestep the warrant requirement they would face to obtain it directly — a documented end-run around the Fourth Amendment. - **The [[Surveillance State]]** — location history is among the most revealing data that exists (it exposes where you sleep, worship, protest, and seek medical care), which is why post-Dobbs concerns about location data tracking visits to reproductive-health clinics became a live [[Privacy]] fight. That GPS is a free public good built by the military, now central to commerce and to surveillance alike, makes it a clean example of dual-use infrastructure. ## See Also - [[Sensor]] — GPS as one input among many - [[Surveillance Capitalism]] — the location-data broker economy - [[Surveillance State]] — government purchase of commercial location data - [[Privacy]] — why location history is uniquely sensitive