11 ms·

"Seeing through walls" motion detection can be done with Doppler imaging and commodity Wi-Fi today using custom firmware. Hundreds of research papers have been

"Seeing through walls" motion detection can be done with Doppler imaging and commodity Wi-Fi today using custom firmware. Hundreds of research papers have been published on this topic. The upcoming IEEE 802.11bf standard is scheduled to add that capability to every router in 2024, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493 & https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/wifi_devices_monitoring/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/wifi_devices_monitori... > In three years or so, the Wi-Fi specification is scheduled to get an upgrade that will turn wireless devices into sensors capable of gathering data about the people and objects bathed in their signals... When 802.11bf will be finalized and introduced as an IEEE standard in September 2024, Wi-Fi will cease to be a communication-only standard and will legitimately become a full-fledged sensing paradigm... tracking can be done surreptitiously because Wi-Fi signals can penetrate walls, don't require light, and don't offer any visible indicator of their presence. IEEE 802.11bf paper (March 2021): https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14918 https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14918 Theory: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/netmit/sFFT/soda_paper.pdf https://groups.csail.mit.edu/netmit/sFFT/soda_paper.pdf

tsjq 5y ago
this one reminds me of the movie Eagle Eye.
erklik 5y ago
Why? What is the desired benefit from this that it's to be put into a standard?
- exporectomy 5y ago
  Here's the good news description of it. Kind of unclear why it's so important as to put into every Wifi device though https://beyondstandards.ieee.org/ieee-802-11bf-aims-to-enable-a-new-application-of-wlan-technology-wlan-sensing/ https://beyondstandards.ieee.org/ieee-802-11bf-aims-to-enabl...
  - codetrotter 5y ago
    From the link you posted: > Measurements obtained with WLAN sensing can be used to support new industrial and commercial applications in semiconductor manufacturing, enterprise networking, and test and measurement equipment. The standard will also benefit end user applications, such as home security, entertainment, energy management (HVAC, light, device power savings), home elderly care, and assisted living. Sounds reasonable. I still worry about what it means for privacy in our homes, and for the future with ever more surveillance and erosion of our rights.
    - rapjr9 5y ago
      I would guess that setting up a WiFi receiver outside of anyones living space but within signal range is not illegal if you are not intercepting and decoding packets, so anyone could currently get visibility into any home with WiFi. Police, neighbors, crooks, anyone. However there is some precedent for police, they are not allowed to use thermal viewers to look through the walls of peoples homes without a warrant. This would seem to be similar. It's been disconcerting that the police have just adopted technologies because they think they would be useful without anyone considering whether a warrant should be required. There should be a law saying that any technology use by police requires a warrant unless it has been specifically allowed to be warrantless. There are some good uses of a WiFi tracker though, such as an automated health monitor. I'd like to have a continuous record of where I am in my house. I could use it to tell how much time I spend on a computer, how much sleep I get, what I spend most of my time doing, how much exercise I get, where I left some object, lots of things. I just don't want other people or companies to have all that information and I don't want the police or government to be able to get it without a warrant.
  - hungryforcodes 5y ago
    I'm not sure why you think this is good news: "The technology can measure range, velocity, and angular information; detect motion, presence, or proximity; detect objects, people, and animals; and be used in rooms, houses, cars, and enterprise environments." It seems incredibly invasive. Can some peeping tom just turn on his WiFi base station to track if the next door neighbour he is obsessed with has a guy over...if she's in her bedroom...is in the shower...you get the idea. Creepy stuff!
- lyaa 5y ago
  The decision of what gets added to such standards is largely a combination of politics and what is actively being used. Some companies and research labs wanted it to be added and they lobbied successfully for it. This technology is already usable with many existing routers, though to a lesser degree. The standard is meant to define expectations of how the technology is implemented in future 'SENS' devices. I guess it could be useful for AR/VR or replace Bluetooth in some location sensing applications (like in stores tracking movement patterns, or monitoring systems for dementia patients living alone). I dislike how this additional privacy infraction is going to be the norm in a few years.
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  They will sell you thief protection, alarm if chidren or pets move to certain places, rbnb tooling and so on. And now that we all have micrphones and gps in our pockets, we will also accept 3d live mapping of our lives. Because "we have nothing to hide"
- zalebz 5y ago
  "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."
- brummm 5y ago
  Enterprises already use Wifi to track customers in stores (albeit in a very simple way compared to the new capabilities). This will enable stores to track customers to a much higher degree.
astatine 5y ago
With this, the must have product in 2025 will be shields along walls and windows to keep the signals within :-)
- ctack 5y ago
  To keep your neighbors signals out. While you stop using wifi :(
qwertox 5y ago
Needing to drill a hole in a wall separating two rooms in order to feed a cable through it recently made me think about using an array of ESP32 in order to attempt to create a mapping of the inside of the wall, so that I don't hit any pipes or electrical cables by accident. The walls we have here are of concrete with steel, so the traditional, cheap wiring / object detectors are basically useless. I wonder if this is possible without dedicating months of tinkering and possibly ending with the need to learn about AI to interpret the data.
- Joeri 5y ago
  How would you even train the AI without building lots of walls of different but precisely known structures and densities?
  - withinboredom 5y ago
    I would imagine a human can do it post-scan with enough time. If you teach an AI to do it in real-time, there’s no need to build a bunch of walls.
  - ruined 5y ago
    luckily, existing walls of known construction are widely available
    - asdff 5y ago
      You'd be surprised at how many liberties contractors of various pay grades can take behind drywall
- asdff 5y ago
  Seems simpler to just stick a pencil in the first hole and see if you are clear to the other side.
belter 5y ago
"Wi-Fi is among the most successful wireless technologies ever invented. As Wi-Fi becomes more and more present in public and private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its ubiquitousness to implement groundbreaking wireless sensing applications such as human presence detection, activity recognition, and object tracking, just to name a few." "...and private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its ubiquitousness ..." Are these researchers soley focused on their next grant only, do they live in another world? Or do they sometimes pause and think about the ethics of their research?
- Joeri 5y ago
  They think about it, they just consider it somebody else’s problem. The genie is somewhat out of the bottle already, because existing access points can track the position of wifi devices and deduce a lot of this information. This takes it one step further to also track people without wifi devices.
  - belter 5y ago
    This will be deployed in 3 years or so. I think we need a legal and technical approach that will allow "stand your ground" type of rules. Against my neighbor WiFi waves and FFT extrapolation of what division of the house I am in at the moment and with who.
    - ptr2voidStar 5y ago
      > "Stand your ground" rules American spotted.
  - fennecfoxen 5y ago
    > The genie is somewhat out of the bottle already Very much so. As early as 2012, maybe 2013, retailers were piloting technology that would offer guest wifi networks, then track you using the in-store surveillance cameras. Don't even need facial recognition, just tie the person's identity to the phone they logged in with. The camera adds better location data than you could get with the wifi alone. This was about the time that Amazon was offering a Black Friday discount if you used their app to scan the barcode of a product in a retail store, then bought online — and back then, only checkout was https, so if you were in the data path you could detect that sort of a lookup.
aero-glide2 5y ago
I'm confused, doesn't commodity wifi just mean the normally used ones? If so why should we wait till 2024?
Communitivity 5y ago
It's more invasive than that. I've seen MIT research using several WiFi routers to detect heart rate and respiration[1]. It's not too much of a leap to using it as a lie detector. A little more of a leap, and you get cameras watching window shoppers, plus some Machine Learning, to get a system able to detect which items excite which shoppers when they look at the items (via heart rate and respiration). Could also maybe be used to detect shoplifters. [1] https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-detects-peoples-breathing-heart-rate-even-through-walls.html https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-detects-p...
- moonchrome 5y ago
  They can't get a lie detector to work with the sensors strapped to you...
  - skocznymroczny 5y ago
    Does it really matter? The more ambiguous the result, the better for them.
    - wpietri 5y ago
      For sure. If people want something enough, somebody's going to try to sell it to them whether or not it works. People really, really want lie detectors.
    - Loughla 5y ago
      My experience in having a polygraph test applied to me after the business I worked at was robbed is that the results absolutely have no bearing on how the cops act afterward. They only bring you in for that in order to tell you that you failed, and should confess now in order to secure a lighter sentence. Had I not had a family friend who was an ex-police officer, I would've been absolutely scared shitless during that experience. Even knowing they were going to do it, I was still absolutely terrified. It's a fucking travesty that they are allowed to use pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo to terrify people into confessing. I lost all faith in the US police system in 2001 when I had to go through that. I have zero faith in their ability or even willingness to be 'the good guys.'
mattlutze 5y ago
Slays me that wifi ended up with IEEE instead of the IETF for example. The profit motive really seems to drive a privacy-second approach to some of these standards.
- contingencies 5y ago
  RF engineering is hard. IETF is ... scope averse, change averse, inertia-driven, and ... not exactly a bastion of hardware manufacturing excellence. IEEE is also way better than, say, the ITU, whose resistance to packet-based switching is famous and whose systems in that space are largely semi-mythical to extinct and who are politically inclined to actively stand for centralized and billable systems in lieu of decentralized local communications.
throwaway0a5e 5y ago
> tracking can be done surreptitiously because Wi-Fi signals can penetrate walls, don't require light, and don't offer any visible indicator of their presence. Maybe lead paint and aluminum siding will come back into style.
- LinuxBender 5y ago
  Not lead, but same idea [1] It takes a few coats and proper grounding. [1] - https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=emf+shielding+paint&oq=&aqs= https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=emf+shielding+paint&oq...
  - sgc 5y ago
    How big do windows / glass doors need to be before that is more or less compromised?
    - LinuxBender 5y ago
      I don't have a specific formula to answer your question, but there will be leakage regardless of size. This can be partially mitigated with metal screens or fully mitigated part time using steel scroll shutters or steel door shutters. Steel scroll shutters have the benefit of adding R/U insulation rating in cold weather and in some cases can improve physical security.
      - sgc 5y ago
        We want to be able to get natural light and air into the house. I can make a safe room if I need to, but this is an always-on threat and we can't respond with whole house unhealthy environments. Grounded metal (copper or aluminum) screens should work quite well if designed for the application I would think. But that means 100% screening, no fully transparent openings. Maybe we can come up with fluid filled windows that provide the required shielding. What a PITA.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
jl6 5y ago
Coming soon: TV providers that charge based on how many people are in your living room. Peeping Tom spy devices that tell you when your neighbour is in the bathroom (upgrade to Pro to increase the resolution and find out what they’re doing) Anti-alibi logs that prove whether you were or weren’t alone at any given place or time. Industry certification schemes promising to turn this feature off but totally leaving the door open to anyone with a warrant who wishes to turn it back on.
- nathanm412 5y ago
  Sooner than you might think! https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/pay-per-viewer-streaming-xcinex-venue-b1827537.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/pa...
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    Wow, soon we won't even be able to invite friends over anymore without the god damn copyright industry taking issue because not enough rent is being paid.
- Loughla 5y ago
  >Anti-alibi logs that prove whether you were or weren’t alone at any given place or time. This actually gives me the most concern. If it's easy enough to create these logs of location and travel via technology, then it's easy enough to fake these logs. And, when the technology isn't questioned in the general population, you are just immediately guilty in the court of public opinion, let alone in actual court.
- CapstanRoller 5y ago
  "PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE" https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png
at_a_remove 5y ago
You know, you could put a simple circuit across the opening, powered by one of those extremely low power solar cells, handy RFID chip ... they could make sure you are drinking your verification can.
matheusmoreira 5y ago
So how do I jam these signals?
- snarf21 5y ago
  Besides not using WiFi? If you want WiFi to work on your phone while lying in bed, then that requires Wifi signals in your bedroom. Also, remember that they are putting "smarts" into every appliance under the sun, including tea kettles. It is going to be a race to sell information about users from every manufacturer. Even if you go to zero smart devices, are your neighbors going to be less enlightened?
  - matheusmoreira 5y ago
    I don't know. I just want countermeasures against the dystopian technology we'll be facing in the future. If some device tries to image me or my home without my consent, they shouldn't get any useful information. Maybe a signals jammer? Maybe some wall material that blocks signals outside our homes? Custom firmware for our WiFi access points to ensure they aren't doing this, or ensure that they do it in our terms and for our own use instead of some surveillance capitalism nightmare?
    - ctack 5y ago
      Faraday cage your house with anti emf paint and stop using wifi.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
I'm torn by both how awesome this is and how creepy it's potential is.
eth0up 5y ago
First: I think this comment should be a daily post on HN - a staple mantra of sorts, until it dents the stolid bonehead of collective consciousness. Glad it's top comment, even if the lasers got less light... Secondly to everyone; my admittedly and hopefully incorrect perspective deduced from such examples (there are many) is that there is a quiet, surreptitious attitude in elite tech that if there's adequate intelligence to get away with something profitable, it's unconditionally fair to do so - so long as it's not explicitly illegal in a way that can't be bypassed by any conceivable means. I immediately think of a common tendency for (most?) humans to justify the often grotesque treatment of animals in some industrial environments, which seems based on, rather than any baseline of decency, the intelligence of the creatures vs humans and final satisfaction of the debateably necessary end product; eg the same exact actions by an individual done for recreational purposes would be a felony. But I strongly suspect this attitude readily crosses the species gap and much of humanity is viewed thusly. They're dumb, vulnerable, ignorant, defenseless, etc, so let's squeeze em for all we can!$$$! Who wants to be millionaire? Because I perceive much of modern tech as exploitative and even parasitic, I wonder what a comparison between pretech and modern tech exploitation might reveal about the LTS version of ethics vs beta. I suspect that historically, exploitation was more kinetic, unambiguous, conspicuous and effort oriented, whereas modern versions are more ethereal and can take place remotely on an LCD screen pretty passively. In the past, a person typically required persuasion or proximity to make divulge unamiable information. Now, it is involuntarily invisibly siphoned and reapplied to them often undetectably, systematically. I suspect a novel form of unchecked pathological detachment in the ever-growing tech industry, when billions can be rapidly affected by simply executing a blob of effective code, and the consequences reaped as bank deposits, preferred coups, mass behavioral changes, etc. In this environment, even good-natured people can do bad natured shit while keeping ostensibly clean hands and feeling dignified - it's detached, and it's a job. Though I fear a serious diversion between what ought to be more parallel vectors of ethics and development/advancement. A rapidly accelerating diversion. Would this newfangled wizbang be more fugly if viewed holistically and are we weaving a labyrinth of inextricable connections that will only make less and less sense if viewed so? Is there really a future in merchandising every aspect of ourselves, selves that are targets themselves, intended to be corralled into market categories of exteriorly defined self? There are obvious complexities with concepts mentioned, in a nascent world where so many trades and crafts are becoming obsolete and people need to survive or thrive by any means necessary, increasingly digitally so. There's actually great incentive to produce really clever but dubious shit. I can't help but see an epoch of anomie, of unprecedented fundamental changes in self perception and values, a new human resulting. I don't presume to predict the consummation of this, but sure wouldn't mind skipping the median phase. I'll now tuck my cauda and hide, but with a question: We see that as modern technology develops, the individual is and has been adapting to decreasing influence of presence and control of it, both in personal and external application. If this trend continues, what are we getting ourselves into? Are we leaping into a collectively agreed-upon, consensually interpreted greater humanity that I wasn't informed of? Or are we a moth in deep space, fluttering toward a new light every moment with no shortage of singularities?
hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
Really interesting how 1984 actually underestimated the level and capabilities of invasive tracking tech. Instead of having the government force it on us, we just happily install it as the next new upgrade. I'm curious if any of the dystopian sci-fi works actually thought that, instead of the government forcing down and subduing a potentially unruly populace, that they'd basically use "creeping brainwashing" to actually get the populace to demand more top-down control (e.g. how so many Chinese internet users are vehemently pro-government).
_nub3 5y ago
Reminds me of “I'm Not Supposed to Show You This ” – Edward Snowden (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28361341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28361341 IEEE 802.11bf will happen, because we allow it to happen and after it has been established everywhere for some questionable reasons everybody is looking like a suprised Pikachu when stuff like this is being abused.

tsjq 5y ago

this one reminds me of the movie Eagle Eye.

erklik 5y ago

Why? What is the desired benefit from this that it's to be put into a standard?

exporectomy 5y ago
Here's the good news description of it. Kind of unclear why it's so important as to put into every Wifi device though https://beyondstandards.ieee.org/ieee-802-11bf-aims-to-enable-a-new-application-of-wlan-technology-wlan-sensing/ https://beyondstandards.ieee.org/ieee-802-11bf-aims-to-enabl...
- codetrotter 5y ago
  From the link you posted: > Measurements obtained with WLAN sensing can be used to support new industrial and commercial applications in semiconductor manufacturing, enterprise networking, and test and measurement equipment. The standard will also benefit end user applications, such as home security, entertainment, energy management (HVAC, light, device power savings), home elderly care, and assisted living. Sounds reasonable. I still worry about what it means for privacy in our homes, and for the future with ever more surveillance and erosion of our rights.
  - rapjr9 5y ago
    I would guess that setting up a WiFi receiver outside of anyones living space but within signal range is not illegal if you are not intercepting and decoding packets, so anyone could currently get visibility into any home with WiFi. Police, neighbors, crooks, anyone. However there is some precedent for police, they are not allowed to use thermal viewers to look through the walls of peoples homes without a warrant. This would seem to be similar. It's been disconcerting that the police have just adopted technologies because they think they would be useful without anyone considering whether a warrant should be required. There should be a law saying that any technology use by police requires a warrant unless it has been specifically allowed to be warrantless. There are some good uses of a WiFi tracker though, such as an automated health monitor. I'd like to have a continuous record of where I am in my house. I could use it to tell how much time I spend on a computer, how much sleep I get, what I spend most of my time doing, how much exercise I get, where I left some object, lots of things. I just don't want other people or companies to have all that information and I don't want the police or government to be able to get it without a warrant.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  I'm not sure why you think this is good news: "The technology can measure range, velocity, and angular information; detect motion, presence, or proximity; detect objects, people, and animals; and be used in rooms, houses, cars, and enterprise environments." It seems incredibly invasive. Can some peeping tom just turn on his WiFi base station to track if the next door neighbour he is obsessed with has a guy over...if she's in her bedroom...is in the shower...you get the idea. Creepy stuff!
lyaa 5y ago
The decision of what gets added to such standards is largely a combination of politics and what is actively being used. Some companies and research labs wanted it to be added and they lobbied successfully for it. This technology is already usable with many existing routers, though to a lesser degree. The standard is meant to define expectations of how the technology is implemented in future 'SENS' devices. I guess it could be useful for AR/VR or replace Bluetooth in some location sensing applications (like in stores tracking movement patterns, or monitoring systems for dementia patients living alone). I dislike how this additional privacy infraction is going to be the norm in a few years.
BiteCode_dev 5y ago
They will sell you thief protection, alarm if chidren or pets move to certain places, rbnb tooling and so on. And now that we all have micrphones and gps in our pockets, we will also accept 3d live mapping of our lives. Because "we have nothing to hide"
zalebz 5y ago
"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should."
brummm 5y ago
Enterprises already use Wifi to track customers in stores (albeit in a very simple way compared to the new capabilities). This will enable stores to track customers to a much higher degree.

astatine 5y ago

With this, the must have product in 2025 will be shields along walls and windows to keep the signals within :-)

ctack 5y ago
To keep your neighbors signals out. While you stop using wifi :(

qwertox 5y ago

Needing to drill a hole in a wall separating two rooms in order to feed a cable through it recently made me think about using an array of ESP32 in order to attempt to create a mapping of the inside of the wall, so that I don't hit any pipes or electrical cables by accident. The walls we have here are of concrete with steel, so the traditional, cheap wiring / object detectors are basically useless. I wonder if this is possible without dedicating months of tinkering and possibly ending with the need to learn about AI to interpret the data.

Joeri 5y ago
How would you even train the AI without building lots of walls of different but precisely known structures and densities?
- withinboredom 5y ago
  I would imagine a human can do it post-scan with enough time. If you teach an AI to do it in real-time, there’s no need to build a bunch of walls.
- ruined 5y ago
  luckily, existing walls of known construction are widely available
  - asdff 5y ago
    You'd be surprised at how many liberties contractors of various pay grades can take behind drywall
asdff 5y ago
Seems simpler to just stick a pencil in the first hole and see if you are clear to the other side.

belter 5y ago

"Wi-Fi is among the most successful wireless technologies ever invented. As Wi-Fi becomes more and more present in public and private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its ubiquitousness to implement groundbreaking wireless sensing applications such as human presence detection, activity recognition, and object tracking, just to name a few." "...and private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its ubiquitousness ..." Are these researchers soley focused on their next grant only, do they live in another world? Or do they sometimes pause and think about the ethics of their research?

Joeri 5y ago
They think about it, they just consider it somebody else’s problem. The genie is somewhat out of the bottle already, because existing access points can track the position of wifi devices and deduce a lot of this information. This takes it one step further to also track people without wifi devices.
- belter 5y ago
  This will be deployed in 3 years or so. I think we need a legal and technical approach that will allow "stand your ground" type of rules. Against my neighbor WiFi waves and FFT extrapolation of what division of the house I am in at the moment and with who.
  - ptr2voidStar 5y ago
    > "Stand your ground" rules American spotted.
- fennecfoxen 5y ago
  > The genie is somewhat out of the bottle already Very much so. As early as 2012, maybe 2013, retailers were piloting technology that would offer guest wifi networks, then track you using the in-store surveillance cameras. Don't even need facial recognition, just tie the person's identity to the phone they logged in with. The camera adds better location data than you could get with the wifi alone. This was about the time that Amazon was offering a Black Friday discount if you used their app to scan the barcode of a product in a retail store, then bought online — and back then, only checkout was https, so if you were in the data path you could detect that sort of a lookup.

aero-glide2 5y ago

I'm confused, doesn't commodity wifi just mean the normally used ones? If so why should we wait till 2024?

Communitivity 5y ago

It's more invasive than that. I've seen MIT research using several WiFi routers to detect heart rate and respiration[1]. It's not too much of a leap to using it as a lie detector. A little more of a leap, and you get cameras watching window shoppers, plus some Machine Learning, to get a system able to detect which items excite which shoppers when they look at the items (via heart rate and respiration). Could also maybe be used to detect shoplifters. [1] https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-detects-peoples-breathing-heart-rate-even-through-walls.html https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-detects-p...

moonchrome 5y ago
They can't get a lie detector to work with the sensors strapped to you...
- skocznymroczny 5y ago
  Does it really matter? The more ambiguous the result, the better for them.
  - wpietri 5y ago
    For sure. If people want something enough, somebody's going to try to sell it to them whether or not it works. People really, really want lie detectors.
  - Loughla 5y ago
    My experience in having a polygraph test applied to me after the business I worked at was robbed is that the results absolutely have no bearing on how the cops act afterward. They only bring you in for that in order to tell you that you failed, and should confess now in order to secure a lighter sentence. Had I not had a family friend who was an ex-police officer, I would've been absolutely scared shitless during that experience. Even knowing they were going to do it, I was still absolutely terrified. It's a fucking travesty that they are allowed to use pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo to terrify people into confessing. I lost all faith in the US police system in 2001 when I had to go through that. I have zero faith in their ability or even willingness to be 'the good guys.'

mattlutze 5y ago

Slays me that wifi ended up with IEEE instead of the IETF for example. The profit motive really seems to drive a privacy-second approach to some of these standards.

contingencies 5y ago
RF engineering is hard. IETF is ... scope averse, change averse, inertia-driven, and ... not exactly a bastion of hardware manufacturing excellence. IEEE is also way better than, say, the ITU, whose resistance to packet-based switching is famous and whose systems in that space are largely semi-mythical to extinct and who are politically inclined to actively stand for centralized and billable systems in lieu of decentralized local communications.

throwaway0a5e 5y ago

> tracking can be done surreptitiously because Wi-Fi signals can penetrate walls, don't require light, and don't offer any visible indicator of their presence. Maybe lead paint and aluminum siding will come back into style.

LinuxBender 5y ago
Not lead, but same idea [1] It takes a few coats and proper grounding. [1] - https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=emf+shielding+paint&oq=&aqs= https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=emf+shielding+paint&oq...
- sgc 5y ago
  How big do windows / glass doors need to be before that is more or less compromised?
  - LinuxBender 5y ago
    I don't have a specific formula to answer your question, but there will be leakage regardless of size. This can be partially mitigated with metal screens or fully mitigated part time using steel scroll shutters or steel door shutters. Steel scroll shutters have the benefit of adding R/U insulation rating in cold weather and in some cases can improve physical security.
    - sgc 5y ago
      We want to be able to get natural light and air into the house. I can make a safe room if I need to, but this is an always-on threat and we can't respond with whole house unhealthy environments. Grounded metal (copper or aluminum) screens should work quite well if designed for the application I would think. But that means 100% screening, no fully transparent openings. Maybe we can come up with fluid filled windows that provide the required shielding. What a PITA.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

jl6 5y ago

Coming soon: TV providers that charge based on how many people are in your living room. Peeping Tom spy devices that tell you when your neighbour is in the bathroom (upgrade to Pro to increase the resolution and find out what they’re doing) Anti-alibi logs that prove whether you were or weren’t alone at any given place or time. Industry certification schemes promising to turn this feature off but totally leaving the door open to anyone with a warrant who wishes to turn it back on.

nathanm412 5y ago
Sooner than you might think! https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/pay-per-viewer-streaming-xcinex-venue-b1827537.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/pa...
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  Wow, soon we won't even be able to invite friends over anymore without the god damn copyright industry taking issue because not enough rent is being paid.
Loughla 5y ago
>Anti-alibi logs that prove whether you were or weren’t alone at any given place or time. This actually gives me the most concern. If it's easy enough to create these logs of location and travel via technology, then it's easy enough to fake these logs. And, when the technology isn't questioned in the general population, you are just immediately guilty in the court of public opinion, let alone in actual court.
CapstanRoller 5y ago
"PLEASE DRINK VERIFICATION CAN TO CONTINUE" https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png https://i.imgur.com/dgGvgKF.png

at_a_remove 5y ago

You know, you could put a simple circuit across the opening, powered by one of those extremely low power solar cells, handy RFID chip ... they could make sure you are drinking your verification can.

matheusmoreira 5y ago

So how do I jam these signals?

snarf21 5y ago
Besides not using WiFi? If you want WiFi to work on your phone while lying in bed, then that requires Wifi signals in your bedroom. Also, remember that they are putting "smarts" into every appliance under the sun, including tea kettles. It is going to be a race to sell information about users from every manufacturer. Even if you go to zero smart devices, are your neighbors going to be less enlightened?
- matheusmoreira 5y ago
  I don't know. I just want countermeasures against the dystopian technology we'll be facing in the future. If some device tries to image me or my home without my consent, they shouldn't get any useful information. Maybe a signals jammer? Maybe some wall material that blocks signals outside our homes? Custom firmware for our WiFi access points to ensure they aren't doing this, or ensure that they do it in our terms and for our own use instead of some surveillance capitalism nightmare?
  - ctack 5y ago
    Faraday cage your house with anti emf paint and stop using wifi.

nickthemagicman 5y ago

I'm torn by both how awesome this is and how creepy it's potential is.

eth0up 5y ago

First: I think this comment should be a daily post on HN - a staple mantra of sorts, until it dents the stolid bonehead of collective consciousness. Glad it's top comment, even if the lasers got less light... Secondly to everyone; my admittedly and hopefully incorrect perspective deduced from such examples (there are many) is that there is a quiet, surreptitious attitude in elite tech that if there's adequate intelligence to get away with something profitable, it's unconditionally fair to do so - so long as it's not explicitly illegal in a way that can't be bypassed by any conceivable means. I immediately think of a common tendency for (most?) humans to justify the often grotesque treatment of animals in some industrial environments, which seems based on, rather than any baseline of decency, the intelligence of the creatures vs humans and final satisfaction of the debateably necessary end product; eg the same exact actions by an individual done for recreational purposes would be a felony. But I strongly suspect this attitude readily crosses the species gap and much of humanity is viewed thusly. They're dumb, vulnerable, ignorant, defenseless, etc, so let's squeeze em for all we can!$$$! Who wants to be millionaire? Because I perceive much of modern tech as exploitative and even parasitic, I wonder what a comparison between pretech and modern tech exploitation might reveal about the LTS version of ethics vs beta. I suspect that historically, exploitation was more kinetic, unambiguous, conspicuous and effort oriented, whereas modern versions are more ethereal and can take place remotely on an LCD screen pretty passively. In the past, a person typically required persuasion or proximity to make divulge unamiable information. Now, it is involuntarily invisibly siphoned and reapplied to them often undetectably, systematically. I suspect a novel form of unchecked pathological detachment in the ever-growing tech industry, when billions can be rapidly affected by simply executing a blob of effective code, and the consequences reaped as bank deposits, preferred coups, mass behavioral changes, etc. In this environment, even good-natured people can do bad natured shit while keeping ostensibly clean hands and feeling dignified - it's detached, and it's a job. Though I fear a serious diversion between what ought to be more parallel vectors of ethics and development/advancement. A rapidly accelerating diversion. Would this newfangled wizbang be more fugly if viewed holistically and are we weaving a labyrinth of inextricable connections that will only make less and less sense if viewed so? Is there really a future in merchandising every aspect of ourselves, selves that are targets themselves, intended to be corralled into market categories of exteriorly defined self? There are obvious complexities with concepts mentioned, in a nascent world where so many trades and crafts are becoming obsolete and people need to survive or thrive by any means necessary, increasingly digitally so. There's actually great incentive to produce really clever but dubious shit. I can't help but see an epoch of anomie, of unprecedented fundamental changes in self perception and values, a new human resulting. I don't presume to predict the consummation of this, but sure wouldn't mind skipping the median phase. I'll now tuck my cauda and hide, but with a question: We see that as modern technology develops, the individual is and has been adapting to decreasing influence of presence and control of it, both in personal and external application. If this trend continues, what are we getting ourselves into? Are we leaping into a collectively agreed-upon, consensually interpreted greater humanity that I wasn't informed of? Or are we a moth in deep space, fluttering toward a new light every moment with no shortage of singularities?

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago

Really interesting how 1984 actually underestimated the level and capabilities of invasive tracking tech. Instead of having the government force it on us, we just happily install it as the next new upgrade. I'm curious if any of the dystopian sci-fi works actually thought that, instead of the government forcing down and subduing a potentially unruly populace, that they'd basically use "creeping brainwashing" to actually get the populace to demand more top-down control (e.g. how so many Chinese internet users are vehemently pro-government).

_nub3 5y ago

Reminds me of “I'm Not Supposed to Show You This ” – Edward Snowden (2021) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28361341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28361341 IEEE 802.11bf will happen, because we allow it to happen and after it has been established everywhere for some questionable reasons everybody is looking like a suprised Pikachu when stuff like this is being abused.