The disruptions in public transportation apps have reached Gush Dan, and the Ministry of Transportation has no response

Disruptions in the payment applications in public transportation began this morning (Thursday) due to the disruption of the GPS satellites. These disruptions have been in effect for a long time in the Haifa area, to make it difficult for Iran and its allies to use GPS services to direct weapons to this area in Israel. Today, large areas in Israel are disrupted in GPS reception or appear in the Beirut area to mislead.

The Ministry of Transportation has no real answer to damage to the navigation services and applications. The ministry announced that due to location disruptions in Tel Aviv, the information about public transportation in real time, in applications and on the electronic signage at the bus and train stations, is not available and is not reliable, and that it is possible to plan the travel route using the official website and use the service centers of the public transport 8787* or the service centers of the operators.

The ministry did not announce a clear policy regarding the trip when it is not possible to validate in the application, and is content with the message: “If there are disruptions in the possibility of validating and paying on public transportation, one must make sure to try and validate. If necessary, contact the drivers or attendants on the spot.” The ministry did not explain how contacting the drivers or flight attendants would help.

The validation using multi-line cards is correct, but the disruptions in the applications create an unequal situation. App users can travel for free, but risk fines from inspectors. According to the precedent in the north of the country, the inspectors sometimes consider the passengers and allow travel without validation and sometimes impose fines. The attack on payment apps is sometimes successful, but the result is a reality of continuous uncertainty both about the ability to attack and about the consequences of not validating.

No lessons were learned from the disruptions in the north

The GPS disruptions in the north of the country have been going on for months. Recently, the Knesset’s Special Committee on Public Inquiries chaired by MK Yitzhak Pindros (Torah Judaism) asked the Minister of Transportation and Road Safety Miri Regev and the Director of the Senior Supervision, Control and Enforcement Division in her office to instruct public transportation operators in Haifa and Kiryat to freeze the use of mobile applications for payment on buses, matrons and trains The purpose of the appeal is to prevent in advance the risk of fines being imposed, but the Ministry of Transport has not published any new directive to date.

One theoretical solution is to update the applications so that passengers can check in the application while manually marking their location and being responsible for the reliability of the information, as opposed to locating the location according to GPS data. The Ministry of Transportation did not require the app operators to make this type of change.

These concerns have increased recently, after the assassination attack in Damascus, which hit senior officials in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. The Revolutionary Guards announced yesterday about a “deadly attack that will take place soon” against Israel. In response, the alert in the security system in Israel was raised and the GPS jamming was also extended to the Gush Dan area.