181–190 of 199 posts
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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 contr…
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China is a huge place with a population larger than the entire western world combined, so I don't doubt something like that could be happening somewhere. Maybe it was a tech demo?
However in general that is not a thing. If you pick any of China's megacities and walk down a street it will take you all of 5 seconds to realize how absolutely not a thing that is. Jaywalking is rampant, so obviously there's efforts to crack down on it, but I've yet to see anyone be shy about it around cameras*.
* And cameras really are everywhere. Though I suspect a lot are closer to a decorative prop for deterrence than a surveillance tool.
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> 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 do…
As a former Google employee, I had witnessed first hand how powerful the internal privacy working groups were and how much they were able to push back against product teams when they not only demanded more privacy on new features but also invented many of the privacy techniques that made things possible. It’s frankly not even hard to find Google authors of RFCs that meaningfully contribute to Internet privacy. No mat…
Or Google being fined for abuse of their dominant position [2]?
Do you think that when you make an LLM request, it uses full homomorphic encryption not to disclose your information?
I guess I don't even have to give an example for Amazon, do I?
> It’s frankly not even hard to find Google authors of RFCs that meaningfully contribute to Internet privacy.
Well I didn't want to say that Google employees are malevolent, or that Google doesn't create good technology. But Big Tech (including Google) clearly regularly abuse their dominant position.
Back to "Google knows everything". Would you say that Google Search is built in a way that the Google servers cannot associate an IP to its search requests? Would you say that Gmail is built in a way that the Google servers don't have access to all the emails? What about calendar, documents, drive? Google maps requests? How does Google offer information about what's happening "nearby" without knowing the location of the device?
And now back to the location in particular: what about the "Find Hub" / "Find my device"? You can go on the website and ask Google where your device is, after you click a popup that says you allow Google to retrieve this information. Doesn't this obviously show that Google has access to it? They could access it without asking the permission, couldn't they?
So to the question: "do we need to develop a new WiFi technology and deploy it in order to have the technical capability of mass surveillance?", the answer is "no, we have the technical capability already". And by "we", we mean "Big Tech".
[1]: https://cybersecuritynews.com/track-android-users-covertly/ [2]: https://www.techspot.com/news/109360-eu-fines-google-35-bill...
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the article is off-base with wifi. the real story is in 6G cellular. there is a working group at 3gpp, an EU-funded research group (6th sense, Open6GHub), universities (NCSU, Bristol), and many companies working very hard right now on proposals to include "integrated/joint sensing and communication" (ISAC/JCAS) in the 6G spec. ISAC means adding mmWave to 6G (ostensibly for speed, but also) to build a high-fidelity 3d…
> ISAC means adding mmWave to 6G (ostensibly for speed, but also) to build a high-fidelity 3d realtime "digital twin" of the real world that can see through walls, owned and operated by your telecom provider. "See through walls" There used to be a great video on youtube of a very high power 60GHz signal being blocked by a door. Sad I can never find it. E Band isn't much better. IIRC the 60GHz radio is being left out…
it won't start as a mass deployment -- just focused on stadiums, airports, government buildings, etc.; maybe some authoritarian states will attempt mass deployments, but the cost will be an obstacle. also, my read is that western telcos aren't interested in owning a surveillance tool because they know their governments won't let them keep it.
hopefully 6G won't be the end of physical privacy. but it will prototype the end of physical privacy -- and i think it will end up being just a matter of time from that point on, unfortunately.
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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.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/07/22/whofi_wifi_identifier... > Researchers in Italy have developed a way to create a biometric identifier for people based on the way the human body interferes with Wi-Fi signal propagation.. can re-identify a person in other locations most of the time when a Wi-Fi signal can be measured. Observers could therefore track a person as they pass through signals sent by different Wi-Fi n…
Wi-Fi uses long wavelengths, you can cancel out the noise with one person but crowds are all distorting the same very weak signal here. 5Ghz = 6cm, visible light is 380 to about 750 nanometers.
Android 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…
Even with airplane mode on (that disables GPS, iirc)?
Yet, it's pointless when people VOLUNTEER they private information to corporate actors who happily give EVERYTHING to the highest bidder or, when they have to, for free to governments who ask.
So... sure, be worried of that, be worried of networks of cameras but and more if you ALREADY give everything away, don't be worried, just embrace it! I'm not even being sarcastic here.
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…
Well nowadays you individually track by using mac addresses and other network information from the devices within range. Cisco has some creepy real time maps of your location with each person walking around and all their previous visits etc
You could for example flag a location (house) and get a list of all of the comings and goings over the last x months, then look them up by identity. You could also flag when an individual was in proximity to another, or when someone turned on, off or switched phones.
I’m sure it amounted to illegal surveillance and would be inadmissible if any of it was done without a warrant, but it would be beautiful for parallel construction. (How is that even constitutional???)
It apparently relied on some kind of infrastructure deployment that consisted of “traffic cameras” and “satellites” ( I’m certain not of the spacecraft type) that I assume were just small receivers mounted on street lights, since the streetlights were almost completely replaced at the same time as the cameras were put in, by the same out of state contractor.
I was there to change out a bad SSD and do a RAM upgrade on one of the servers. I don’t imagine the technology has become less invasive.
If you have a phone or carry active Bluetooth devices, assume you are 100 percent tracked 100 percent of the time.
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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 contr…
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What a colossally bad thing to do for personal privacy. Yes let's give governments the ability to spot and pick up anyone they want for any reason under the guise of 'criminality'. ICE or the SS would have a field day.
I guess people better keep their mouth shut if they know what is good for them??