Dr Dave:
Galileo is important because at the moment all global positioning is based upon a single system whose primary raison d'etre is military. Dubyaq could chose to, for example, switch back on SA at 24 hrs notice (as Clinton did when he switched it off). This makes users of the sytstem very vulnerable.
Drifting the topic, but...
I've often wondered about this. GPS is relatively 'old tech'. With the current rate of progress in computer technology, I suspect it won't be too long before some enterprising (probably Oriental) folks manage to effectively break the SA encryption and produce, for the civilian market, a GPS receiver which has decryption permanently enabled and gives an SA decode capability which *can't be switched off*.
Effectively, a civilian clone of a military receiver which auto-generates its own decrypt keys.
I *thought* I'd read that an agreement with the US had been reached, and Galileo would also have some form of SA, or similar functionality, built into it?
R1