I have Xfinity as a backup isp. Bye bye!
Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
251–260 of 517 posts
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#252is ther an adblock for https ? can we do subdomain https ad blocking ?
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
We suffer from a problem that engineers want nothing to do with politics. I 1000% agree we need a digital bill of rights. It pains me every time a “well behaved” website pops up a cookie consent banner for the billionth time after I already consented because the browser wiped all the persistent user identifiers available to it. For my protection -_- I want privacy codified in human law. I didn't vote for standards bo…
What law would you propose? I think the hard part is "Instagram and TikTok remain free-with-ads."
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#254Sensing 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.
What's the commercial use of having this data though? Or even law enforcement use? We all have our phones on us most of the time anyways, knowing where in my house I'm at doesn't really... change anything...
There are 1000+ public research papers on machine learning + RF detection of human activity, including but not limited to breathing rate, keystrokes, body position, body motion, gestures, sleeping, biometric (identity) signals and more, https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=device+free+wireless+se...
What's the economic value of remote collection of human behavioral signatures without consent, integrated with AI and robotics and "digital twins"? We're not there yet, but if the technology continues improving, what's the future value of "motion capture" of humans without body-worn sensors?
In theory, this will enable "Minority Report" user interfaces. 3D gestures could be combined with "AI" voice interfaces. Biometric authentication (e.g. heart rate) could replace passwords. Walk into a room and it adapts itself to your preferences. Etc.
There are lots of "cool" Jetsons sci-fi use cases, but ONLY IF the data and automation are entirely under control of the human subjects, e.g. self-hosted home server, local GPUs, local LLM, local voice recognition, etc.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm. That misses the broader reality. 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.
Your described option is not the broader reality. Most people use the hardware that is provided with the service by default. Last time I checked, there's not even an additional rental fee.
Sure, but you still can use your own hardware if you choose to. And that's all that the original comment you replied to was saying. If you choose to use your own hardware, then Comcast won't have control over it and cannot do this wifi motion detection.
Of course, most people won't do this, but that's besides the point.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#256> 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…
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.
More scary in the hands of the government. Whether you didn’t trust the prior US government or this one - which pretty much covers the entire population - that’s the folks that shouldn’t have this technology at their disposal. I struggle to see a use a corporation will have for this even extending ad tech to the maximum potential. The most useful application is surveillance for political purposes - in the current government, how better to cross reference with the uber database of people they are building to enact political policy to know when people they want to disappear to a foreign prison? This provision doesn’t even seem to require a warrant.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#257> 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…
you cant tell most of those things because same ip doesnt coorespond to a unique service and plenty of programs and websites phone to servers where addresses have changed. there is no static database.
you also cant associate it to a person automatically. the burden of proof is high - how many jurors have tech at home they know nothing about and maybe got hacked?
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#258> 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…
You can turn the customer AP off; however, the Comcast Customer Shared WiFi is always on. This is true even for Comcast Business accounts. You're expected to be a hotspot for their other customers. Which is one of the main reasons I bought my own modem.
for comcast business you can get the modem that doesn't have wifi at all.
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
We suffer from a problem that engineers want nothing to do with politics. I 1000% agree we need a digital bill of rights. It pains me every time a “well behaved” website pops up a cookie consent banner for the billionth time after I already consented because the browser wiped all the persistent user identifiers available to it. For my protection -_- I want privacy codified in human law. I didn't vote for standards bo…
What law would you propose? I think the hard part is "Instagram and TikTok remain free-with-ads."
Would ads still be worth enough if they were targeted based on things like what you watch/read/follow/subscribe to on that platform and your general location?
Or can instagram only be free if ads are targeted to detailed profiles of individuals built over decades as they are tracked across the whole internet?
Re: Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal. I disagree. Solutions should be technical whenever possible, because in practice, laws tend to be abused and/or not enforced. Laws also need resources and cooperation to be enforced, and some laws are hard to enforce without creating backdoors or compromising other rights. "ISPs will be prohibited from spying on their customers" doesn't mean ISPs won't s…
You can’t solve social problems with technical solutions. Technical solutions won’t work without some kind of legal backing to force it.