> Epistemics > Verification and Provenance > arghXiv:2509.02063
On the Absence of an Independent Verification of Orbital Provenance in Civilian Positioning Systems
Abstract: The civilian positioning service is universally described as deriving from a constellation of orbiting transmitters. This paper does not dispute that description. It asks a narrower question: by what independent procedure, available to a party outside the operating agencies, has the description been confirmed? We review the standard demonstrations and find that each assumes the provenance it is offered to establish, in the sense that the observation is predicted equally well by the received account and by any account preserving the same signal geometry. We do not advance an alternative account and we hold none. We hold only that the question has not been answered, that it is answerable, and that the reluctance we have encountered in raising it is itself informative.