(Extracted from White House press release
dated 1 May 2000) - GPS has always been the dominant standard satellite navigation system thanks to the U.S. policy of making both the signal and the receiver design specification available to the public completely
free of charge. The U.S. previously employed a technique called Selective Availability (SA) to globally degrade the civilian GPS signal. New technologies demonstrated by the military enable the U.S. to degrade the GPS signal on a regional basis. GPS users worldwide would not be
affected by regional, security-motivated, GPS degradations, and businesses reliant on GPS could continue to operate at peak efficiency. Additional information about GPS and the Selective Availability decision is available online at the Interagency GPS Executive Board Web site:
http://www.igeb.gov.
