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WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

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Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#51

Post by ffsm8 »

avidiax wrote: post #34
vasco wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Modern phones connect with a randomized MAC address. So yes, you can track a person around, but you will need another system (like the WiFi login page) to match MAC to identity.

Really? I thought it was only I phones that did that though?

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#52

Post by iberator »

ffsm8 wrote: post #51
avidiax wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern phones connect with a randomized MAC address. So yes, you can track a person around, but you will need another system (like the WiFi login page) to match MAC to identity.

Really? I thought it was only I phones that did that though?

windows 11 also has it.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#53

Post by oasisbob »

barrystaes wrote: post #50

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…

The approach described in the article is much different and more interesting, as it's passive and doesn't require any electronics on the individual being identified.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#54

Post by oasisbob »

brk wrote: post #13
palmotea wrote: post #5

> The method takes advantage of normal network communication between connected devices and the router. These devices regularly send feedback signals within the network, known as beamforming feedback information (BFI), which are transmitted without encryption and can be read by anyone within range. > By collecting this data, images of people can be generated from multiple perspectives, allowing individuals to be ident…

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?

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#56

Post by ghostly_s »

palmotea wrote: post #5

> The method takes advantage of normal network communication between connected devices and the router. These devices regularly send feedback signals within the network, known as beamforming feedback information (BFI), which are transmitted without encryption and can be read by anyone within range. > By collecting this data, images of people can be generated from multiple perspectives, allowing individuals to be ident…

> So what's the resolution of these images, and what's visible/invisible to them?

The researchers never claimed to generate "images," that's editorializing by this publication. The pipeline just generates a confidence value for correlating one capture from the same sensor setup with another.

[Sidenote: did ACM really go "Open Access" but gate PDF download behind the paid tier? Or is the download link just very well hidden in their crappy PDF viewer?]

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#59

Post by oasisbob »

avidiax wrote: post #18
jbotz wrote: post #11

Paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3719027.3765062

I don't feel that this article is a fair summary of the paper. And the title is just clickbait. The paper says, in a somewhat contrived scenario, with dozens of labelled walkthroughs per person, they can identify that person from their gait based on CSI and other WiFi information. This is a long way from identifying one person in thousands or tens of thousands, being able to transfer identifying patterns among statio…

Indeed. I'm confused by this line from the article

> a study with 197 participants, the team could infer the identity of persons with almost 100% accuracy – independently of the perspective or their gait.

The paper seems to make it clear that the technique still depends on gait analysis, but claims it's more robust against gait variations.

Re: WiFi could become an invisible mass surveillance system

#60

Post by notepad0x90 »

sponaugle wrote: post #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 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-motion

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