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WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

scitechdaily.com

21–30 of 199 posts

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#21
Various cheating to get their conclusions (from the paper):

> To allow for an unobstructed gait recording, participants were instructed not to wear any baggy clothes, skirts, dresses or heeled shoes.

> Due to technical unreliabiltities, not all recordings resulted in usable data. For our experiments, we use 170 and 161 participants for CSI and BFI, respectively. [out of 197]

I wish they had explained what the technical unreliabilities were.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#22
post #12

“Could become” Already is and widely used for exactly what the article worries about

Can you say what products make use of this technique? i.e. is it well known like Juniper Mist or not publicly available?

Verizon has a security feature built around this, https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-motion

Philips WiZ bulbs: https://www.wizconnected.com/en-us/explore-wiz/spacesense

Alarm.com also supports such sensors: https://poweredbyalarm.com/eventresources/wp-content/uploads...

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#23
Not sure how many people are aware that the newer Alexa devices have "presence detection" that uses ultrasound so they can detect when people are nearby. [0]

Heck, even Ecobee remote temperature sensors can do this.

Reminds me of the story about how the Google Nest smoke detector had a microphone in it. [1]

0 - https://www.amazon.com/b?node=23435461011&tag=googhydr-20&hv...

1- https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comments/asmusq/google_says...

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#24
post #10

Could this be countered by wearing wire-mesh patch clothing, perhaps in randomized stylish arrangements?

No! That would make you stand out with the fiery intensity of a sun.

How about personal canisters of chaff that get fired off whenever I enter a room? Before long, folks will get so annoyed with all of the metal fibers I leave behind, that I simply won’t be invited anywhere and my anonymity will have been protected.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#26
This is a VERY controlled environment - and they used 20 passes of each person walking with direct knowledge of each person to train for identity. They did no tests with multiple people walking at the same time, or with any other external moving distortion effects (doors opening, etc) . This is very far from actual 'identification' of people in real public settings - and no doubt the cell phone everyone is carrying with them offers many orders of magnitude better opportunity. In a real crowded environment this would be nearly worthless.

The devices that reported BFI information were also stationary, and there were no extra devices transmitting information that would be conflicting.

A single camera would be much more effective.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#27

Not sure how many people are aware that the newer Alexa devices have "presence detection" that uses ultrasound so they can detect when people are nearby. [0] Heck, even Ecobee remote temperature sensors can do this. Reminds me of the story about how the Google Nest smoke detector had a microphone in it. [1] 0 - https://www.amazon.com/b?node=23435461011&tag=googhydr-20&hv... 1- https://www.reddit.com/r/privacy/comment…

>newer Alexa devices have "presence detection"

Not even the biggest privacy issue of using Alexa devices. I think listening you 24/7 is a bigger potential issue.

Not sure if Alexa has this, but cheap mm-wave wideband multi-GHz sensors(or radars more accurately) now enable more finely grained human presence detection and also human fall detection[1] with the right algos, so you can for example detect if grandma in the nursing home fell down and didn't get back up, but in a privacy focused way that doesn't resort to microphones or cameras. Neat.

>Reminds me of the story about how the Google Nest smoke detector had a microphone in it.

Vapes have microphone arrays in them to detect when you're sucking and light up the heating element. Cheap electronics have enabled a new world of crazy.

[1] https://www.seeedstudio.com/MR60FDA2-60GHz-mmWave-Sensor-Fal...

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#28

This is a VERY controlled environment - and they used 20 passes of each person walking with direct knowledge of each person to train for identity. They did no tests with multiple people walking at the same time, or with any other external moving distortion effects (doors opening, etc) . This is very far from actual 'identification' of people in real public settings - and no doubt the cell phone everyone is carrying w…

Yes, you won't be able to do this on normal wifi traffic typically either, you need to send specific packets at a high enough rate (in between normal internet traffic) in order to sense with any accuracy, as I also remarked earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976849

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#29
post #28

This is a VERY controlled environment - and they used 20 passes of each person walking with direct knowledge of each person to train for identity. They did no tests with multiple people walking at the same time, or with any other external moving distortion effects (doors opening, etc) . This is very far from actual 'identification' of people in real public settings - and no doubt the cell phone everyone is carrying w…

Yes, you won't be able to do this on normal wifi traffic typically either, you need to send specific packets at a high enough rate (in between normal internet traffic) in order to sense with any accuracy, as I also remarked earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46976849

Yea, that makes sense as you would need quite a bit of information across a reasonable temporal range if the identifying qualities are movement related. Very interesting.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#30
post #10

Could this be countered by wearing wire-mesh patch clothing, perhaps in randomized stylish arrangements?

No! That would make you stand out with the fiery intensity of a sun.

If the metal bits are floppy enough it should add quite a bit of noise
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