>>1752217no it's very simple
light travel at well defined, constant speed
gps sat constellations has predictable orbit
gps system has very strict timekeeping, maintained by the air force
so the act of just receiving signal, you now know how far away from a particular sat you're receiving
with multiple simultaneous interception of such signal you have enough info to triangulate your position
so this way gps sat is like flying fm radio tower
it does not care who receives it, and decoding is a responsibility of the receiver. therefore a one way process
the smartphone tracking simply smuggle out those gps data by other means
