What time is it in Israel?- opinion
Every time Israel jams GPS, it may also be jamming the clock that keeps the country running.
Israel's timekeeping is a complex issue, as the country's defense measures against hostile systems create challenges for its GPS signals. While this interference is a necessary defense, it also leads to discrepancies in time across the country. Israel's Time Determination Law of 1992 defines Israeli time as UTC(INPL), generated by the National Physical Laboratory using cesium atomic clocks.
However, the distribution and use of this national time standard is inconsistent, with telecommunications companies calibrating against the national standard only once a year. This bureaucratic gap allows for the continued use of GPS receivers in critical systems, such as the power grid and banking systems, which are vulnerable to spoofing attacks.
These attacks can cause receivers to malfunction and report incorrect times, without any visible signs of failure. To address this issue, Israel should distribute the UTC(INPL) standard over optical fiber, with measured and corrected transit delays. The country should also require critical systems to run two independent time sources and check them against each other, ensuring that any subtle deviations are detected.
This approach would cost less than a single night of interceptor fire and would provide a more reliable timekeeping system for Israel's infrastructure.
Written by urgent.news from Jerusalem Post's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
