Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

joshhorne.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 192 posts

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#91

Post by lgats »

smegsicle wrote: post #62
parsimo2010 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right on. The whole "mm wave radar is detail rich but gives privacy" line is a contradiction. Any data that is detailed enough to be useful is detailed enough to be a privacy concern. While it might not be the same as leaking nude photos from someone's camera, radar data is something that needs to be carefully thought out. Radar data from a car can provide information about people's driving behavior even without loca…

> leaking nude photos from someone's camera whatever happened to that meme about common ccd cameras picking up uv images that make out details through eg swimsuits, but hopefully filtered and removed in software before making it to the images?

it’s likely this was actually infrared imaging capabilities

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/15/21259723/oneplus-8-pro-x-...

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#92

Post by argomo »

imnotlost wrote: post #39

Privacy is a political/legal problem, not a technology problem.

A cryptopunk would say just the opposite: that privacy is a technical problem that, properly solved, alleviates us of political concerns.

Both views seem to miss the mark. The crypto folks see mathematical certitude while ignoring the dynamics of the social/legal context in which it must operate. By contrast, those who argue that "artifacts don't have politics" would absolve technologists of an ethical duty to consider how their products impact society.

In short, privacy required both technical and legal protections as well as a society that demands it as a fundamental human right

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#93

Post by mNovak »

jasondclinton wrote: post #19

I've been waiting for someone to finally make a consumer stud finder that works and this just might finally happen after this deregulation of the spectrum. The construction industry would hand over wheelbarrows full of money for a BLE phone-paired puck that located studs and pipes behind drywall. Someone could even sell a "pro" version that combined the data from multiple pucks to render a 3D point cloud of the insid…

As a radar guy I'd love to hear more about this. Stunned that's not a solved problem.

To be clear you probably wouldn't get a 3D view of the whole room, just a narrow window like a conventional stud finder.

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#94

Post by krasin »

samatman wrote: post #36
AdamH12113 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Privacy” seems to be a marketing term here; what they really mean is that you can’t take naked pictures with it.

Which is also nonsense of course, the pornotron of TSA fame is mm wave radar.

The difference is the number of transmitters / receivers. TSA uses an array of them (from top to bottom) with narrow beams and they also rotate them and ask you to not move, so that effectively their number is considerably higher (ten of thousands), when reconstructing the image. Additionally, they use a higher frequency (160-400GHz), which additionally helps with resolution. See [1] and [2].

If we limit the number of transmitters / receivers to 3/4, the image reconstruction becomes impossible, similar how you would not really make a real photo from a few color sensors stationary looking at a scene, while a linear array of them that moves around an object would make a perfect scanner. It's a non-ideal analogy, but the best I can offer.

1. http://mt-fedfiles.blogspot.com/p/tsa-frequency-updates.html

2. https://www.3dbodyscanning.org/cap/papers/2017/17263mcmakin....

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#95

Post by astrange »

kortilla wrote: post #88
astrange wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's odd that people care so much about technology "identifying them" when they have cell phones in their pocket and license plates on their car. There's not much of your daily life left after that, but I suppose it makes them feel good to imagine they're important enough to be tracked.

I opt into carrying a cell phone and it’s when I want. I don’t opt in to my neighbor’s Alexa tracking my comings and goings by scanning through my walls.

You can do that by sniffing wifi packets even if you can't decrypt them, I think?

Could be a good opportunity for home Faraday cages.

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#96

Post by doctor_eval »

dheera wrote: post #64
smegsicle wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> leaking nude photos from someone's camera whatever happened to that meme about common ccd cameras picking up uv images that make out details through eg swimsuits, but hopefully filtered and removed in software before making it to the images?

Why not just fix the swimsuits? Seems like a much more straightforward solution.

The problem was not swimsuits. It was any clothing that was relatively thin. Swimsuits was just an example.

In any case why would we be required to don tinfoil suits every time we go to the airport?

Re: mmWave radar, you won't see it coming

#100

Post by dheera »

doctor_eval wrote: post #96
dheera wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not just fix the swimsuits? Seems like a much more straightforward solution.

The problem was not swimsuits. It was any clothing that was relatively thin. Swimsuits was just an example. In any case why would we be required to don tinfoil suits every time we go to the airport?

I mean, the material has a bug that wasn't discovered until recently, so we fix the bug and re-deploy the material. It's that simple. Just embed some carbon fibers or something in the swim suit, there are tons of ways to block UV.

It's like if your car seatbelts have a bug you issue a product recall. Same thing.

Post reply on HN