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I believe that these kinds of applications are central goals of the 5G deployment project. This can already be done with ordinary WiFI hardware. Here is one o

I believe that these kinds of applications are central goals of the 5G deployment project. This can already be done with ordinary WiFI hardware. Here is one of multiple papers about it: - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713643/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5713643/ How much easier will "device free localization and identification" be with 5G's higher frequencies and beamforming antenna arrays? Consider, why else would people be writing papers like these? - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929065/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6929065/ - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337698696_WiFreeze_Multiresolution_Scalograms_for_Freezing_of_Gait_Detection_in_Parkinson%27s_Leveraging_5G_Spectrum_with_Deep_Learning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/337698696_WiFreeze_... - https://www.5gitaly.eu/2018/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/5G-Italy-White-eBook-5G-Localization.pdf https://www.5gitaly.eu/2018/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/5G-It... - https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3324320.3324370 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.5555/3324320.3324370 - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7947692 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/7947692 I don't like the way 5G is pitched to the public. It feels icky. All the marketing is like "this will change the world and bring internet to rural areas plus you'll be able to watch netflix on your phone omg can you believe that!" But in a few years they'll suddenly be saying "Awe golly shucks whaddya know, who knew 5G radios can also be used to spy on your aging parents breathing habits... how convenient! Now we can send an ambulance before you even call!" etc.

girishso 7y ago
That's scary. We're handing over great powers to the governments/corporates, needless to say it will be used against us.
- EGreg 7y ago
  How quaint. Extrapolate 100 years into the future... we live in a zoo ruled by AI and very few people if anyone in charge. No one can escape or make any meaningful choices of any consequence. Maybe they will partially be in a hive mind and maybe not. And along the way, we were always saying “ooh, this will be used against us someday”. Well of course all this will be built and “used against us”. How you gonna stop progress?
  - girishso 7y ago
    As an individual, I can decide to not work on such things. Didn't Google employees take a stand against something similar? and Google had to backtrack.
    - EGreg 7y ago
      If someone else works on it, then it will still happen. And what then?
      - girishso 7y ago
        Of course it will happen. It's like atomic energy, some physicists decided to not work on it and some did work on it. There's nothing we can do about it.
      - lallysingh 7y ago
        Often there's a talent penalty to morally questionable projects.
        jmnicolas 7y ago
        It depends on how you frame the "morally questionable projects". There's no talent shortage for 5G. I see no talent shortage for special forces that go in foreign countries to maim and kill all in the name of freedom and democracy.
        anigbrowl 7y ago
        That just means they're crude and oppressive as opposed to smooth and oppressive. If you're expecting the market to fix this problem, it won't.
        DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
        companies are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing information and also adapt/evolve their messaging so it never looks as bad from the inside. this works for both very large companies and start-ups. And rational, smart employees can still be gamed with the simplest of tricks, e.g. "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove." -- Robert Anton Wilson https://www.seriouswonder.com/raw-what-the-thinker-thinks-the-prover-will-prove/ https://www.seriouswonder.com/raw-what-the-thinker-thinks-th...
- BWGB 7y ago
  Agreed. can we just live in a world where we can have a little bit of privacy. I'm OK using a card to pay for a journey, if that means it takes me a few seconds longer to take it out of my wallet. Alot of this kind of technology is implemented without your consent, take facial recognition in airports. You have to go through the process with no easy alternative. The comment 'if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about' is so old and such a weak argument. People have fought for years to defend the freedoms of people and it is being thrown away and disregarded by corporations and governments.
hdhsisjd 7y ago
At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community. Predicting an emergency based on observed biometrics would be incredibly useful to many of them and these sorts of dismissals are exactly why the digital privacy movement has increasingly lost steam with regular people. I'm not contesting that these technologies and services aren't also going to be used for dubious purposes but the idea that they have no social value is a meme for privileged people who earn enough to be dismissive of the potential savings.
- lm28469 7y ago
  This is at the "think of the children" level of argumentation. Give them an apple watch, it'll do a better job as an emergency device, without compromising everyone's privacy, and at a fraction of the cost.
- prostheticvamp 7y ago
  > At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community. A statement that requires qualification to be meaningful. Medicare, Medicare HMOs, and Medicare/Medicaid dual coverage add up to giving elders better healthcare coverage than any other demographic in the US.
  - hdhsisjd 7y ago
    Rediculous and clearly ignorant, anyone who has experienced a high needs elderly person is going to be aware of the high cost to achieve a comfortable standard of living. There are articles in mainstream newspapers every year about mistreatment of elderly patients in convalescent homes, instances of abuse from family members are common and also known to be under reported as well and the list goes on. What you're arguing relates to cost while entirely sidestepping the topic of if those costs actually produce acceptable outcomes. Lowering costs further empowers the elderly to act in a more agentic fashion.
    - nyolfen 7y ago
      not sure how pervasive biometric monitoring is supposed to address elder abuse, but "elderly are a severely under served community" is perhaps the most historically rootless and wrong-yet-unfalsifiable thing i've read this week. 'bad things happen to some old people' is not contrary evidence and has nothing to do with the medical attention and resources available for the elderly in our society in both absolute and relative terms.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
Fascinating read thus far ( I have only gotten through device-free localization ). Thank you for sharing these. I am somewhat concerned that even that overview paper lists law enforcement as potential future customers. The target audience is clearly well-defined.
aivisol 7y ago
> "this will change the world and bring internet to rural areas while the reality is that if it is difficult (and expensive) to deliver internet to rural areas using 3G/4G, it will be more so with 5G with its higher frequencies...
- macawfish 7y ago
  Yeah, it's a sham, yet: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wireless-trump/trump-to-hold-event-friday-on-5g-rural-broadband-sources-idUSKCN1RN2TR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wireless-trump/trump-...
hilbert42 7y ago
I've just sent this link to a friend with a comment which I consider too uncouth to post here. Needless to say, this stuff scares the shit out of me. I'm far from being a tech Luddite but if this stuff continues to go the way its going without any public discussion and oversight and strict concomitant regulation then we humans will effectively lose all of our autonomy—we'll cease to be humans and become automatons who are scared of our own shadows. Essentially, this tech has the potential to relegate the traditional authoritarian police state, the Stasi et al back into the kindergarten class—we won't know what's struck us if or when this happens. There are evil techie shits in this world who dream up evil stuff like this, we normal techies need to rally against them before it's too late. This is a prime example of why the study of ethics has to become a major and significant part of all science and engineering courses. It won't change human behavior but mandating it into courses will ensure that everyone understands the implications of their research and work. That's to say that in future no techie would ever be able to use the Nuremberg Defense after they've caused the shit to hit the fan.
- TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
  Blaming engineers for what is essentially a political issue will not solve the problem. There will always be smart people willing to work for either a lot of money or in the name of national defense. If you want a change, work on and fix the political system. Get laws passed that will prevent this, and get oversight put in place that would prevent the under-the-table surveillance that seems to be more and more previlant.
  - badness 7y ago
    And there will always be strong young men willing to commit more immediately tangible atrocities and brutalize the weak, for money or national defense.
  - malcolmgreaves 7y ago
    No, absolving engineers from responsibility is the wrong move. People are responsible for what they make: hiding behind "oh it's the system's fault not mine!" is morally bankrupt. It's literally being a coward.
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Holy hell. I used to be mildly pro-5G and vocally contra people contra to it, on the grounds that all the objections I've seen were a variation of "I don't understand what non-ionizing radiation is". But I see I didn't think far enough about what's possible with that tech - therefore I failed to apply my usual heuristic ("anything that's technologically possible and economically feasible will be attempted, no matter how immoral it is"). I'll be reevaluating my position on this (for what little it's worth now). Thanks for bringing it up!
jrockway 7y ago
It is kind of sad to see. The carriers saw "hey all these people are giving away WiFi for free and not giving us money", so they fixed the glitch and just made their own version of WiFi that they get money for when you use. Imagine a world where the WiFi alliance said "fuck it, 802.11 is dead, we're going to use modern technology" and just developed 5G technology but in an open way that anyone could use? Things would be a lot better. But here we are, with backwards compatibility for 802.11b that eliminates any chance of ever getting good performance (except in an RF test chamber), and so companies are just routing around the damage and turning WiFi-alike into a profit center. At one point the mobile carriers were just planning to just flat-out steal the unlicensed band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum I haven't heard any arguments about how 5G is going to come to rural areas, however. I think the backhaul requirements are pretty heavy. So in Manhattan, probably going to work out quite well. In the middle of nowhere? We'll see about that.
- evdndjsusgwh 7y ago
  >I haven't heard any arguments about how 5G is going to come to rural areas, however. I think the backhaul requirements are pretty heavy. So in Manhattan, probably going to work out quite well. In the middle of nowhere? We'll see about that. Presumably it will come there by being built? Rural is a crap market that only sort of gets serviced, I don't see how anyone can make a good faith argument that rural users should hold out for... I don't even know what. There's political momentum around 5g which means that there's money on the table for a rural 5g rollout. Why would any industry player waste their time laying cable in the countryside more than they have to? 5g in cities is promising not for the reasons you mentioned but simply because it's a work around for local monopoly laws.
  - lallysingh 7y ago
    Starlink is probably Rural's best bet.
- garaetjjte 7y ago
  What's wrong with 802.11?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

girishso 7y ago

That's scary. We're handing over great powers to the governments/corporates, needless to say it will be used against us.

EGreg 7y ago
How quaint. Extrapolate 100 years into the future... we live in a zoo ruled by AI and very few people if anyone in charge. No one can escape or make any meaningful choices of any consequence. Maybe they will partially be in a hive mind and maybe not. And along the way, we were always saying “ooh, this will be used against us someday”. Well of course all this will be built and “used against us”. How you gonna stop progress?
- girishso 7y ago
  As an individual, I can decide to not work on such things. Didn't Google employees take a stand against something similar? and Google had to backtrack.
  - EGreg 7y ago
    If someone else works on it, then it will still happen. And what then?
    - girishso 7y ago
      Of course it will happen. It's like atomic energy, some physicists decided to not work on it and some did work on it. There's nothing we can do about it.
    - lallysingh 7y ago
      Often there's a talent penalty to morally questionable projects.
      - jmnicolas 7y ago
        It depends on how you frame the "morally questionable projects". There's no talent shortage for 5G. I see no talent shortage for special forces that go in foreign countries to maim and kill all in the name of freedom and democracy.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        That just means they're crude and oppressive as opposed to smooth and oppressive. If you're expecting the market to fix this problem, it won't.
      - DyslexicAtheist 7y ago
        companies are perfectly capable of compartmentalizing information and also adapt/evolve their messaging so it never looks as bad from the inside. this works for both very large companies and start-ups. And rational, smart employees can still be gamed with the simplest of tricks, e.g. "What the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove." -- Robert Anton Wilson https://www.seriouswonder.com/raw-what-the-thinker-thinks-the-prover-will-prove/ https://www.seriouswonder.com/raw-what-the-thinker-thinks-th...
BWGB 7y ago
Agreed. can we just live in a world where we can have a little bit of privacy. I'm OK using a card to pay for a journey, if that means it takes me a few seconds longer to take it out of my wallet. Alot of this kind of technology is implemented without your consent, take facial recognition in airports. You have to go through the process with no easy alternative. The comment 'if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to worry about' is so old and such a weak argument. People have fought for years to defend the freedoms of people and it is being thrown away and disregarded by corporations and governments.

hdhsisjd 7y ago

At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community. Predicting an emergency based on observed biometrics would be incredibly useful to many of them and these sorts of dismissals are exactly why the digital privacy movement has increasingly lost steam with regular people. I'm not contesting that these technologies and services aren't also going to be used for dubious purposes but the idea that they have no social value is a meme for privileged people who earn enough to be dismissive of the potential savings.

lm28469 7y ago
This is at the "think of the children" level of argumentation. Give them an apple watch, it'll do a better job as an emergency device, without compromising everyone's privacy, and at a fraction of the cost.
prostheticvamp 7y ago
> At least in the usa, the elderly are a severely under served community. A statement that requires qualification to be meaningful. Medicare, Medicare HMOs, and Medicare/Medicaid dual coverage add up to giving elders better healthcare coverage than any other demographic in the US.
- hdhsisjd 7y ago
  Rediculous and clearly ignorant, anyone who has experienced a high needs elderly person is going to be aware of the high cost to achieve a comfortable standard of living. There are articles in mainstream newspapers every year about mistreatment of elderly patients in convalescent homes, instances of abuse from family members are common and also known to be under reported as well and the list goes on. What you're arguing relates to cost while entirely sidestepping the topic of if those costs actually produce acceptable outcomes. Lowering costs further empowers the elderly to act in a more agentic fashion.
  - nyolfen 7y ago
    not sure how pervasive biometric monitoring is supposed to address elder abuse, but "elderly are a severely under served community" is perhaps the most historically rootless and wrong-yet-unfalsifiable thing i've read this week. 'bad things happen to some old people' is not contrary evidence and has nothing to do with the medical attention and resources available for the elderly in our society in both absolute and relative terms.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

Fascinating read thus far ( I have only gotten through device-free localization ). Thank you for sharing these. I am somewhat concerned that even that overview paper lists law enforcement as potential future customers. The target audience is clearly well-defined.

aivisol 7y ago

> "this will change the world and bring internet to rural areas while the reality is that if it is difficult (and expensive) to deliver internet to rural areas using 3G/4G, it will be more so with 5G with its higher frequencies...

macawfish 7y ago
Yeah, it's a sham, yet: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wireless-trump/trump-to-hold-event-friday-on-5g-rural-broadband-sources-idUSKCN1RN2TR https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-wireless-trump/trump-...

hilbert42 7y ago

I've just sent this link to a friend with a comment which I consider too uncouth to post here. Needless to say, this stuff scares the shit out of me. I'm far from being a tech Luddite but if this stuff continues to go the way its going without any public discussion and oversight and strict concomitant regulation then we humans will effectively lose all of our autonomy—we'll cease to be humans and become automatons who are scared of our own shadows. Essentially, this tech has the potential to relegate the traditional authoritarian police state, the Stasi et al back into the kindergarten class—we won't know what's struck us if or when this happens. There are evil techie shits in this world who dream up evil stuff like this, we normal techies need to rally against them before it's too late. This is a prime example of why the study of ethics has to become a major and significant part of all science and engineering courses. It won't change human behavior but mandating it into courses will ensure that everyone understands the implications of their research and work. That's to say that in future no techie would ever be able to use the Nuremberg Defense after they've caused the shit to hit the fan.

TheAdamAndChe 7y ago
Blaming engineers for what is essentially a political issue will not solve the problem. There will always be smart people willing to work for either a lot of money or in the name of national defense. If you want a change, work on and fix the political system. Get laws passed that will prevent this, and get oversight put in place that would prevent the under-the-table surveillance that seems to be more and more previlant.
- badness 7y ago
  And there will always be strong young men willing to commit more immediately tangible atrocities and brutalize the weak, for money or national defense.
- malcolmgreaves 7y ago
  No, absolving engineers from responsibility is the wrong move. People are responsible for what they make: hiding behind "oh it's the system's fault not mine!" is morally bankrupt. It's literally being a coward.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Holy hell. I used to be mildly pro-5G and vocally contra people contra to it, on the grounds that all the objections I've seen were a variation of "I don't understand what non-ionizing radiation is". But I see I didn't think far enough about what's possible with that tech - therefore I failed to apply my usual heuristic ("anything that's technologically possible and economically feasible will be attempted, no matter how immoral it is"). I'll be reevaluating my position on this (for what little it's worth now). Thanks for bringing it up!

jrockway 7y ago

It is kind of sad to see. The carriers saw "hey all these people are giving away WiFi for free and not giving us money", so they fixed the glitch and just made their own version of WiFi that they get money for when you use. Imagine a world where the WiFi alliance said "fuck it, 802.11 is dead, we're going to use modern technology" and just developed 5G technology but in an open way that anyone could use? Things would be a lot better. But here we are, with backwards compatibility for 802.11b that eliminates any chance of ever getting good performance (except in an RF test chamber), and so companies are just routing around the damage and turning WiFi-alike into a profit center. At one point the mobile carriers were just planning to just flat-out steal the unlicensed band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_in_unlicensed_spectrum I haven't heard any arguments about how 5G is going to come to rural areas, however. I think the backhaul requirements are pretty heavy. So in Manhattan, probably going to work out quite well. In the middle of nowhere? We'll see about that.

evdndjsusgwh 7y ago
>I haven't heard any arguments about how 5G is going to come to rural areas, however. I think the backhaul requirements are pretty heavy. So in Manhattan, probably going to work out quite well. In the middle of nowhere? We'll see about that. Presumably it will come there by being built? Rural is a crap market that only sort of gets serviced, I don't see how anyone can make a good faith argument that rural users should hold out for... I don't even know what. There's political momentum around 5g which means that there's money on the table for a rural 5g rollout. Why would any industry player waste their time laying cable in the countryside more than they have to? 5g in cities is promising not for the reasons you mentioned but simply because it's a work around for local monopoly laws.
- lallysingh 7y ago
  Starlink is probably Rural's best bet.
garaetjjte 7y ago
What's wrong with 802.11?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]