Most people assume GPS always worked for everyone. It didn't. Since its inception, the U.S. military intentionally degraded the signal available to civilians. This was called Selective Availability (SA). It introduced random errors, making a civilian receiver's location accurate only to within about 100 meters. The military reserved the precise, encrypted signal for itself.
For years, this was a given—a necessary compromise for national security. But by the late 1990s, pressure was building. Commercial industries, from aviation to shipping to emergency services, needed better accuracy. Civilian workarounds were emerging. The military advantage was diminishing. The cost of maintaining SA began to outweigh its benefit.
On May 2, 2000, President Bill Clinton announced the discontinuation of Selective Availability. There was no physical switch, just an order to stop introducing the error. Overnight, civilian GPS accuracy improved tenfold, to about 10 meters. The decision was framed as a boon to global transportation and safety. But its true impact was generative. It handed a precise, global utility to the world's engineers and entrepreneurs for free. It made possible ride-sharing apps, precision farming, geotagged photos, and the map in your pocket. The military created the system, but by turning off the artificial noise, Clinton unlocked its potential as a public good, embedding a military grid into the fabric of civilian life with a quiet, bureaucratic decree.