Related discussion 7 days ago:
WiFi can read through walls
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37469920 (171 comments)
Your WiFi Can See You
31–40 of 93 posts
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#32I'm a little skeptical of the paper in question: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2301.00250.pdf
If you look at the training and test set info:
> We report results on two protocols: (1) Same layout: We train on the training set in all 16 spatial layouts, and test on remaining frames. Following [31], we randomly select 80% of the samples to be our training set, and the rest to be our testing set. The training and testing samples are different in the person’s location and pose, but share the same person’s identities and background. This is a reasonable assumption since the WiFi device is usually installed in a fixed location. (2) Different layout: We train on 15 spatial layouts and test on 1 unseen spatial layout. The unseen layout is in the classroom scenarios.
Depending on how they selected various frames -- let's just say it was random -- the model could have learned something to effect of "this RF pattern is most similar to these two other readings I'm familiar with" (from the surrounding frames) and can therefore just interpolate between the resulting poses associated with those RF patterns (that the model has compressed/memorized into trained weights).
If you look at the meshes between the image ground truth and the paper's results, you'll see that they are strikingly similar. I find this also suspect because WiFi-band RF interacts a lot more with water than with clothes and so you would expect the outline/mesh to get the "meat-bag" parts of you correct but not be able to guess the contours of baggy clothes. That is... unless it has memorized them from the training set.
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#33Dina Kitabi was doing wifi sensing before 2017: https://people.csail.mit.edu/dina/publications.html?tag=syst...
No doubt that work would have fed into the development of the WiFi 802.11bf standard.
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#34Earlier 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…
> committed a crime and left evidence somewhere
A Harvard professor wrote a book titled Three Felonies A Day which argues that there are so many laws to break that an average working professional in America will commit an average of three felonies every day. I do not know the accuracy of the claim but this idea of over-criminalization is an interesting one to think about.
Specifically, how likely is it for a person to have unknowingly committed a crime and left evidence? (Of course, it’s not a violent crime assuming a regular sane individual.) Are you certain you’ve never left evidence for any sort of “white collar” crime which you unwittingly committed?
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#35Earlier 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…
> Parallel construction only works if you've actually committed a crime and left evidence somewhere it can be plausibly found...
> if you're willing to fabricate evidence, you don't need to actually find any.
I am reminded of "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him."
Or, in the not famous enough "Don't talk to the police" lecture[1], the policeman telling how he can just surveil anyone for long enough and they will break the law, because, as the lawyer points out in his part of the talk, there are so many laws that it's basically impossible not to breach one at some point.
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#36The wifi router sees you (a bit like a mini radar), but someone outside your premises would still have to hack the router? Or do ISPs already have that access?
Also curious to know how far wifi routers 'see'? If it's more than a few meters there could be more potential surveillance by wifi router than by cctv!
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#37I thought they made that up in that Person Of Interest[1] Episode, seems like they were just ahead of the curve on tech
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#38The wifi router sees you (a bit like a mini radar), but someone outside your premises would still have to hack the router? Or do ISPs already have that access? Also curious to know how far wifi routers 'see'? If it's more than a few meters there could be more potential surveillance by wifi router than by cctv!
Look up TR-069. Always use your ISP-supplied router in bridge/modem mode only.
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#39The wifi router sees you (a bit like a mini radar), but someone outside your premises would still have to hack the router? Or do ISPs already have that access? Also curious to know how far wifi routers 'see'? If it's more than a few meters there could be more potential surveillance by wifi router than by cctv!
> Or do ISPs already have that access?
"In order to comply with DOCSIS4.2 regulations, we require anonymous WiFi telemetry for 5GhZ or higher due to safety. You can disable this at any time and use 2.4GhZ."
Or some such. Just give it time.
Re: Your WiFi Can See You
#40The wifi router sees you (a bit like a mini radar), but someone outside your premises would still have to hack the router? Or do ISPs already have that access? Also curious to know how far wifi routers 'see'? If it's more than a few meters there could be more potential surveillance by wifi router than by cctv!
Look up TR-069. Always use your ISP-supplied router in bridge/modem mode only.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TR-069
Eye-opening indeed..