As is becoming increasingly common, employers often use GPS devices on company cars to track their whereabouts during the workday. Which is great for security, sure, but significantly less great if you need a little you time for yourself (slackers). In order to combat this little hurdle, one New Jersey man named Gary Bojczak decided to take matters into his own hands this past August — and jammed Newark’s entire satellite-based tracking system in the process.
Investigators noticed there might be a problem when Bojcazk came rolling up to work with a truck that was “emanating signals within a restricted frequency band used by the augmentation system.” Apparently, the truck’s on-board GPS jammer wasn’t only stopping Bojcazk’s boss from tracking him down, it was even interfering with the airport’s take-off and landing signals. Which, as you can imagine, got the FCC in a bit of a huff.
Bojczak ultimately surrendered the device, which confirmed the FCC’s suspicions, since the signals ceased as soon as he handed it over. Now, our renegade worker has just been handed a hefty $US32,000 civil penalty for his decision to play hooky. One question remains, though — what could this man have possibly been trying to do that would warrant blacking out the entire airport’s tracking system? We encourage you to leave your wildest speculations down below.[BetaBeat]
Image: Shutterstock/Carlos Yudica