You're carrying a mass surveillance system in your pants pocket
WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
121–130 of 199 posts
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#122This 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, but things could be refined. With more resources and research thrown at it, it could become more versatile, that's why the title of the post says "could". And chances are, there are private and government entities already doing this. Research like this has been coming out for at least a decade now. Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now: https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-mo…
This has already been an area of research, both publicly, and most likely in private/government defense research. In a targeted situation, i.e. surveillance of a household of 6, this would work easily enough...but I doubt there is enough information to provide reliable (high AUC) tagging of ID in a public scenario oh hundreds to thousands of individuals.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#123This 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, but things could be refined. With more resources and research thrown at it, it could become more versatile, that's why the title of the post says "could". And chances are, there are private and government entities already doing this. Research like this has been coming out for at least a decade now. Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now: https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-mo…
> Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now
WiFi presence detection is a completely different problem. If the WiFi environment is changing past a threshold, return a boolean yes or no. It can't actually tell if someone is present or if the environment is just changing, such as a car driving close enough to reflect signals back in a certain way.
Doing mass surveillance where you detect individual people in a random home environment isn't the same thing at all. All of these "could" claims are trying to drawn connections between very different problems.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Resolution and positional accuracy are very poor. It’s more like ‘an approximate bag of water detector’. Gait analysis is complete fiction. Especially with a non-visual approach like this.
Given the number of gait analysis publications over several decades using varying techniques, can you recommend a good review article disproving all of them?
Given the number of publications about curing over several decades using varying techniques, can you recommend a good review article disproving all of them?
Answer: no need, if it had been cured, it would be cured. And it is not.
My point being that many publications saying "towards X" may mean that we are making some progress towards X, but they don't mean at all that X is possible.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#125Android devices already know exactly where they are even with GPS disabled, because they sniff the nearby WIFI networks and then ask Google where they are. QED Google knows already, all combined is mass metadata surveillance already provided to those that tap into it. Any sub-meter precision or presence detection does not really matter, if these companies have all your other questions, queries, messages, calendars, b…
First this is not just Android. Apple does the same thing. You can buy an iPad which physically does not have any GPS hardware and it can reasonably tell you where you are. Personally I first learned of this feature when I bought a second-generation iPad, so it’s been there a while ago. Second, it is a logical leap to assume Google knows everything already. They could for example build this nearby Wi-Fi based locatio…
> Second, it is a logical leap to assume Google knows everything already. They could for example build this nearby Wi-Fi based location querying API with privacy in mind
In which world are you living?
> It is tired and lazy to argue that just because some Big Tech has the capability of doing something bad therefore they must already be doing it.
It has the capability of doing something bad, and it has a history of doing it. Better not forget the last part.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#126Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but things could be refined. With more resources and research thrown at it, it could become more versatile, that's why the title of the post says "could". And chances are, there are private and government entities already doing this. Research like this has been coming out for at least a decade now. Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now: https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-mo…
> Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now WiFi presence detection is a completely different problem. If the WiFi environment is changing past a threshold, return a boolean yes or no. It can't actually tell if someone is present or if the environment is just changing, such as a car driving close enough to reflect signals back in a certain way. Doing mass surveillance where you detect indivi…
You'll have to explain that a bit more. Isn't the threshold detection analyzing radio signal data? For identifying people, you don't need to reconstruct their face or fingerpring using that data. you just need to fingerprint them.
With gait analysis for example, it's only looking at a handful of data points, the way we walk is very unique. lip-reading, i can see how that's a stretch, but out movement patterns and gait are disturbances in radio waves. If you're using just one person's wifi, that sounds difficult, but if you're collecting signal from multiple adjacent wifi access points, it's more realistic to build a very coarse motion representation, perhaps with a resolution no finer than 1 cubic ft, but even with more coarse representations, gait can be observed.
Even gait aside, the volume profile of a person and their location in the house alone are important data points, couple that with the unique wifi identifier or IP, you can make a really good guess at who the person is, and what room they're in.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but things could be refined. With more resources and research thrown at it, it could become more versatile, that's why the title of the post says "could". And chances are, there are private and government entities already doing this. Research like this has been coming out for at least a decade now. Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now: https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-mo…
This has already been an area of research, both publicly, and most likely in private/government defense research. In a targeted situation, i.e. surveillance of a household of 6, this would work easily enough...but I doubt there is enough information to provide reliable (high AUC) tagging of ID in a public scenario oh hundreds to thousands of individuals.
if it's a public scenario, you don't need that, they're using wifi on people's persons to id them. The concern is more gait analysis, and by some accounts even lip reading is possible with mm-wave 5g.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#128This "could become" sounds exactly like when you look at a cool robotics project, and when you ask the researcher what it could be used for, they say "it could be used for search & rescue after a natural disaster".
The truth is that it's cool research that currently has zero use-case. But a) journalists would not write about that and b) researchers may try to use examples to explain what their research does. Probably researchers are tempted to find a cool use-case of course, because it's better for them if journalists write about their research.
This sounds like cool research that is not remotely close to becoming an invisible mass surveillance system.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but things could be refined. With more resources and research thrown at it, it could become more versatile, that's why the title of the post says "could". And chances are, there are private and government entities already doing this. Research like this has been coming out for at least a decade now. Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now: https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-mo…
Yeah, it can and will be refined, but the major limiting factor is resolution. Wi-Fi radio waves are just too big to get a very clear image.
like i mentioned in another comment, do you really need good resolution for gait analysis? You also have people carrying their phones inside the house all the time, so you know what bssid is associated with that coarse movement. and if you have access to their ap/router combo, you can tell what IP that device has and what domains it's been visiting.
Let's say you visit a friend in a different city, the same ISP controlling their router, can use your mac, but even if you turn off your wifi or leave your phone in your car, your volume profile and gait can betray you. how you sit, how you lean, how you turn. I'd wager, if 6-10 distinct "points" can be made out and associated with a person, that's all that's needed to uniquely identify that person after enough analysis of their motion, regardless of where they go in the world.
Imagine if they're not using one AP, but using your neighbors AP as well, two neighbor APs and your own can triangulate and refine much better.
Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but things could be refined. With more resources and research thrown at it, it could become more versatile, that's why the title of the post says "could". And chances are, there are private and government entities already doing this. Research like this has been coming out for at least a decade now. Even Xfinity has motion detection in homes using this technique now: https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-mo…
Only if wifi is radically increased in frequency, power, directionality or antenna size. And i mean way beyond practicallity. It would be easier to identify people by the sounds of thier footsteps, something easily done through anything with a microphone. With three microphones, you can track that movement to the inch.
or if wifi from mobile devices, and your neighbor's APs and their wifi devices is collated to build a fine-enough picture of movements.