151–160 of 517 posts
Sensing is (sadly) part of Wi-Fi 7. If you have a recent Intel, AMD or Qualcomm device from the past few years, it's likely physically capable of detecting human presence and/or activity (e.g. breathing rate). It can also be done with $20 ESP32 devices + OSS firmware and _possibly_ with compromised radio basebands.
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Okay I'm as concerned about privasy as everybody else is here but i also gotta admire that its pretty neat they can actually do that. Are they measuring the signal echo like what radar does? If they controlled both the receiver and transmitter i wouldn't be as surprised to find out they can tell when something crosses between them and form a 2-dimensional mesh (like that episode of Star Trek TNG where geordie detects…
It's far from great for imaging, but it can be done. https://www.zmescience.com/research/inventions/wifi-technolo...
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Comcast has remote control of all of their equipment so they will just turn it on for you if they get a court order or a big enough check from an adtech company. Wifi imaging is a bit like a silhouette and generally accurate enough to work out gait and height which could give a good indication of which people are in what locations in a home. That is some very scary power in the hands of a corpo.
they only have some level of control over DOCSIS modem. if you install the cheapest/simplest DOCSIS modem, and connect it to your own wireless access point that is NOT controlled by Comcast - they wont know anything. They will only see traffic coming from 1 local IP - of your wireless AP
They provide a modem / router combination device at even their cheapest tier.
That device can leverage this technology, and the technology isn’t reliant on traffic.
They can gather plenty, and can provide it to third parties without our knowledge or consent.
> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are goi…
The solution here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal. If we rely on the technical path, Comcast can achieve the same by how many active IPv6 addresses are in use. Even if you aren't using your phone, the device is going to be constantly pinging services like email, and your ISP can use that to piece together how many people are at home. If we rely on legal protection, then not only Comcast, but all ISPs will…
The solution can be technical, but only if it is also sneaky. Blocking or disallowing certain information is one thing but making that information worthless is better. A simple AI agent could pretend to ping all sorts of services. It could even do some light websurfing. This fake traffic would nullify any value from the real traffic, destroying the market that feeds this surveillance industry.
I see a UI that allows homeowners to fake certain people being in the house when they are not, either replaying traffic or a selection of generic bots that mimic the traffic of various cohorts.
> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are goi…
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This technology doesn't rely on you actually having a WiFi device on you. It can detect presence/motion by changes to the standing waves of the EM propagation throughout the room. As the salty water meatbags move from room to room we change how the reflections and scattering patterns of 2.4 and 5GHz waves move. Studying these changes and some calibration, you can even determine small changes (like is the person on th…
im very skeptical of the accuracy claimed. The layout and complexity of objects in most homes to do this is way to awkward to work reliably. For someone breathing or a heartbeat you need much higher GHz signal. Usually this is done at 30ghz to 60ghz. The power flux leaving the antenna has an inverse square drop off rate which makes this basically impractical unless your standing directly in front of it.
It is clearly just monitoring RSSI and everybody's acting like this is some spooky radar based technology.
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they only have some level of control over DOCSIS modem. if you install the cheapest/simplest DOCSIS modem, and connect it to your own wireless access point that is NOT controlled by Comcast - they wont know anything. They will only see traffic coming from 1 local IP - of your wireless AP
Hmm. Not much of this is true. They provide a modem / router combination device at even their cheapest tier. That device can leverage this technology, and the technology isn’t reliant on traffic. They can gather plenty, and can provide it to third parties without our knowledge or consent.
What you're missing, is that you are allowed to use your own modem. You can purchase an Arris Surfboard, and use that.
They still have control of that modem, but can gather no downstream data. That the devices are not distributed by Comcast personally is not relevant to you being able to do this.