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Worldwide Tracking
To provide you all the conveniences of modern life, most GPS enabled phones and laptops are equipped with a transponder that can be located by positioning satellites. So, if you bother to carry a cellphone or laptop these days, you are being tracked. Not in the Tom Clancy, agents on your trail kind of way -- not yet anyway. If that thought alone is enough to make you think about relocating, I have some bad news: every industrialized country has a GPS system that can be used to find you -- unless you opts to start using carry pigeons.
In the United States, the GPS tracking system is NAVSTAR-GPS. It was developed and maintained by the United States military, and uses a minimum of three satellites to triangulate position through a series of time and orbit reports. Though its use has been widespread among many industries for a long time, the recent surge in affordable hand-held technology has now made it so affordable it has become a standard feature for many cellular phones.
The Russian Federation uses GLONASS. This system is an alternate to the US version, and is considered to be complementary. Begun in 1976, GLONASS uses 24 total satellites, with 21 required for processing any given the signal and three satellites used as spares. GLONASS uses two types of signals to calculate position, and can also measure the velocity of a traveling vehicle as well. As with the US version, GLONASS was originally developed to replace the aging Tsikada System, which used to take up to an hour to find a given position.
The Chinese tracking system, COMPASS, includes 35 satellites and spans the entire globe. There will be two types of service: open (public) and restricted (military). Even though it is also known as Beidou-2, this system is not going to be anything like Beidou-1, China's original system. This GPS system is definitely one to watch in the coming years. Presently, it only has a limited scope of use.
No place is off the map, so to speak. For the European Union, they use a GPS tracking device simply referred to as GALILEO. This system was unanimously approved in 2007 by all 27 member countries, with plans to be operational by 2013. There will be bases in both Italy and Germany, and unlike GPS, Galileo is created by the public and not the military, meaning that the military will not have the ability to block it from public use like other countries.
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