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Your WiFi Can See You

mrereports.substack.com

21–30 of 93 posts

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#21
post #11

Apropos of nothing, a conductive mesh with 1/2" holes suffices to block 2.4 Ghz signals, while 1/4" holes suffice to block 5 Ghz signals. https://www.homedepot.com/s/hardware%20cloth

Yes!

We build walls out of materials opaque to visible light. Our walls are basically windows for wifi, so make them opaque! It's all EMR

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#23
post #4

I feel like “putting wifi in my home” is similar to “putting bodies that emit heat in my home”. Neither of which implicitly grant law enforcement to come and observe either through the walls of my home. I am not a lawyer, nor am I familiar with the SCOTUS case referenced in the article. But I really hope it is precedent enough to make any judge throw out any such violations without any hassle.

Still enables parallel construction. They can illegally search and surveil you without your knowledge and there's not much anyone can do about it. They can't submit any findings as evidence but they can totally anonymously tip off other authorities or something. It must be physically impossible to violate our privacy or it doesn't work.

Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found - i.e. "a random search of the public woods near your area found a shallow grave, and tire-tracks matching your car" - but the search was conducted because what actually happened was you were telling a guy "yes I definitely killed Tony and buried him in the woods".

People keep using the term as though it implies some legal means of fabricating evidence against someone: which is ridiculous because if you're willing to fabricate evidence, you don't need to actually find any.

It's also worth noting that in the case of incidental wifi surveillance, it's likely the plain-sight doctrine would apply: if you're being imaged and positioned by broadcasts you yourself are making and nearby devices can receive, then this would be ruled in plain sight and rightly so (I can't stop my routers and devices from detecting nearby devices as part of interference avoidance).

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#24

If someone is worried that their government could be flashing the firmware of their WiFi router to use the beamforming antennae of the router to track them walking around their home.... Then they should be way more worried that their government is using any access to their wifi router at all. Like, you got way bigger things to worry about at that point, right? There are a million surveillance side-channels that could…

No, what could be a bigger worry than an omnipresent government intent on total control?

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#25

If someone is worried that their government could be flashing the firmware of their WiFi router to use the beamforming antennae of the router to track them walking around their home.... Then they should be way more worried that their government is using any access to their wifi router at all. Like, you got way bigger things to worry about at that point, right? There are a million surveillance side-channels that could…

I disagree. The trajectory of technology generally is: possible -> prototype -> product -> common -> common and cheap If Wi-Fi surveillance were to become common and cheap, other methods would be produced to make data harvesting common and cheap to the surveillance state/bigco. The best way to avoid that dystopia is to safeguard it early in the process.

You are living in that dystopia already, then, and your efforts are equivalent to plugging a hole in the grand dam with your finger.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#26
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still enables parallel construction. They can illegally search and surveil you without your knowledge and there's not much anyone can do about it. They can't submit any findings as evidence but they can totally anonymously tip off other authorities or something. It must be physically impossible to violate our privacy or it doesn't work.

Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found - i.e. "a random search of the public woods near your area found a shallow grave, and tire-tracks matching your car" - but the search was conducted because what actually happened was you were telling a guy "yes I definitely killed Tony and buried him in the woods". People keep using the term as…

Even if you committed a crime, police should not be able to find out about it through illegal means. Police should not be allowed to run SIGINT operations on citizens. They should not even have that capability. Why is it normal for police to have these literal spy movie technologies?

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#27
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still enables parallel construction. They can illegally search and surveil you without your knowledge and there's not much anyone can do about it. They can't submit any findings as evidence but they can totally anonymously tip off other authorities or something. It must be physically impossible to violate our privacy or it doesn't work.

Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found - i.e. "a random search of the public woods near your area found a shallow grave, and tire-tracks matching your car" - but the search was conducted because what actually happened was you were telling a guy "yes I definitely killed Tony and buried him in the woods". People keep using the term as…

Ah, so we don't need to worry about egregiously illegal privacy violations as long as we have nothing to hide. Thanks.

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#29
post #6

Reminds me of The Thought Emporium's camera that can see WiFi. https://youtu.be/g3LT_b6K0Mc?si=PRtkeXRqq8UmhpC9

CNLohr made a similar project three years before that: https://youtube.com/watch?v=aqqEYz38ens

I know this stuff is dystopic, but I personally find it really cool. That said, I also disable WiFi and prefer ethernet wherever possible...

Re: Your WiFi Can See You

#30

If someone is worried that their government could be flashing the firmware of their WiFi router to use the beamforming antennae of the router to track them walking around their home.... Then they should be way more worried that their government is using any access to their wifi router at all. Like, you got way bigger things to worry about at that point, right? There are a million surveillance side-channels that could…

You don't think that there is some agency like the NSA or such that can access your full Google search history and location in real time? There might even be some individuals with access that doesn't even require search warrants or anything.
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