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I'm surprised that there's not a single comment here about 802.11ay which is also 60GHz. Each channel on that standard can do something like 40Gbps, which is nu

I'm surprised that there's not a single comment here about 802.11ay which is also 60GHz. Each channel on that standard can do something like 40Gbps, which is nuts. From Wikipedia[0]: > The link-rate per stream is 44 Gbit/s, with four streams this goes up to 176 Gbit/s. Yes, it can't penetrate walls, but is huge for point to point communication. Think VR headset bandwidth, file transfers between devices, wireless backhaul between buildings. It's not just for spying on your cat. I think it's important to remember that it's not magic, it's just radio waves. You can "sense" with a lot more resolution if you use a camera and light bulb. There are plenty of eyeballs, cameras, and lights all around you right now. Even worse, someone could be looking in your window with binoculars. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ay

zeepzeep 5y ago
> It's not just for spying on your cat. Can we stop downplaying privacy issues please?
- EveYoung 5y ago
  Not trying to be provocative, but how is this any worse than existing cameras or motion sensors?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    Do you have those at home?
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    RF is far less hindered by stuff like walls.
  - justaj 5y ago
    With cameras and motion sensors you more or less know how they'll be used and as a user you can choose to disable them (or at the very least block them if you can't disable them). With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether. Added to that, I'll bet that most people wouldn't even begin to imagine that WiFi could be used for sensing people, and they'll continue using WiFi without being aware for the grave privacy implications.
    - refulgentis 5y ago
      There's no reason to assume any of that.
    - Ginden 5y ago
      > With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether. It's rather unreasonable to think that you won't be able to turn off band on router. Especially given fact that 60Ghz is heavily shielded by _doors_, so any usable router would require fallback 2.4/5/6 Ghz connectivity.
      - transpute 5y ago
        802.11bf Wi-Fi 7 Sensing works with all frequencies, 2.4 and up. Even if Neighbor 2 turns off their router, Neighbor 1 could passively use the radio waves from Neighbor 3's router to surveil reflections from Neighbor 2, including keyboard typing, heartrate/breathing, location and physical activity. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493
        judge2020 5y ago
        The problem with this neighbor-spying fear is that "complex math using data from radio waves to sense stuff" is already possible and readily available by anyone willing to study and put in the world of building it, wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics.
        jsmcgd 5y ago
        > wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics It makes it suddenly ubiquitous when all new WiFi devices use the new standard.
        pizza 5y ago
        Removing the PhD-level knowledge requirement from this particular mode of being an asshole doesn't sound like much of an improvement
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - riddleronroof 5y ago
    Your next door neighbor’s wifi will know your every movement, and can probably image it too. End of privacy within closed doors.
    - jagger27 5y ago
      This is hyperbole. 60GHz cannot penetrate walls and closed doors. 2.4GHz and 5GHz lack the resolution to image you, especially if your adversary only has control of one AP. There are already tons of side channel attacks with existing WiFi and Bluetooth that reveal when someone is in the area. Your neighbour could already be tracking your devices, for all you know.
      - transpute 5y ago
        Here are 400 research papers on Wi-Fi sensing with 2.4/5Ghz, https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external
        riddleronroof 5y ago
        Thank you! Also, I can lid the device in a drawer. It’s greatly different than tracking exactly what I’m doing in any room. Also, consider flats next to each other.
- bluGill 5y ago
  Sure, can privacy advocates stop down playing what we lose because we value privacy though? There needs to be a balance, location information will be very useful for a lot of things, but only if we have it fully implemented. I want things to sense when I fall and call for help for me. (If I was at a big risk I'd have a button, but for the average young person the risk is non-zero but very small). I want my home automation stuff to figure out where they are and configure themselves. I want my routers to suggest that I'd get better coverage by moving it. Yes there is privacy concerns and they need to be addressed, but don't lose the good with it.
  - camgunz 5y ago
    I think we're all being a little maximalist here? I think it's fair to say this article's focus is on the tech, so it doesn't discuss the cool stuff (incredible VR experience, sci-fi like gesture apps) or the bad stuff (Google knows when you scratch your ass). I think it's reasonable to read an article that doesn't mention any usage restrictions, look at the track record of tech, and worry about the privacy implications. The Verge includes a whole section on stuff you agree to when purchasing a new laptop when reviewing them. Maybe it's a good idea for us to start insisting on some level of privacy regulation on new tech. This is purely regulatory right, nothing preventing things like VR--just preventing FB from knowing everything you're doing while using their VR headset, and selling that information to others. Maybe that creates an economic constraint, but this seems like a choice consumers can make. For example Amazon sells 2 versions of every Kindle: ad supported and not.
    - ethbr0 5y ago
      It's starting to feel like the #1 go-forward privacy law needs to be a mandatory opt-in choice requirement, with a viable refuse option. It can be asked once at the device level, but regulated information needs to be specified at the highest level (e.g. "location information about an individual"), and then the concrete technical implementation left unspecified. "Does it, or does it not?" is more important than "How?" Because legislation specifying "How?" will always lag technology by decades. (But then again, this probably should have been done in the mid-90s, once it was apparent which way cookies were going)
- kingcharles 5y ago
  Clearly you've not met my cat.
zinekeller 5y ago
> You can "sense" with a lot more resolution if you use a camera and light bulb. (Visible) Light has a frequency of around 400-790 THz, which explains why it has a inherently better resolution.
- jagger27 5y ago
  Yep!
- transpute 5y ago
  https://www.rtinsights.com/li-fi-a-new-wireless-alternative-for-cars/ https://www.rtinsights.com/li-fi-a-new-wireless-alternative-... > Li-Fi connections are broadcast over the air through a light-emitting diodes (LED) broadcaster and support rates up to 100Gbit/s ... Li-Fi can also serve to identify an object’s indoor position more accurately than Wi-Fi or GPS used today (less than 2cm and less than 3 degrees of orientation while it is providing real-time localization (less than 34ms). This accuracy is vital in multiple applications such as navigation In-Door Robots and Drones, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Gaming, among others ... it cannot go through walls, and thus a private local area network (LAN) can be created by lighting up a closed room ... Any organization that needs to keep information within the four walls, such as military bases and banks, can use the technology to keep data restricted to a single room.
  - causi 5y ago
    There's potential for visible-light networking but the Li-Fi people in particular are complete garbage. They claim visible light travels faster than radio waves and say Li-Fi is a hundred times faster than wi-fi but their thousand dollar router can only do 100Mb/s. They also rip off the Wi-Fi Alliance logo.
    - transpute 5y ago
      That's disappointing, sounds like they need competition.
    - cassepipe 5y ago
_trampeltier 5y ago
Yes and no. So you have to have a cable again to every room (for the AP), because the wifi signal can't go thru walls? I hope then you can dissable the lower frequencys, because now you have 5 or more APs in your appartement.
mulmen 5y ago
So if I don’t want anyone taking a WiFi “photo” of me on the throne I should put up aluminum foil curtains?
- ackbar03 5y ago
  Wear a tin foil hat. And take a photo of yourself anyways cause a guy on the throne with a tin foil hat on sounds hilarious
  - kingcharles 5y ago
    I think there is a subreddit for it.
- EMM_386 5y ago
  Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxWiU_v9Qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxWiU_v9Qs
MrYellowP 5y ago
- RF_Savage 5y ago
  But do those cameras and lightbulbs come with a industry standard specification for occupancy sensing. Occupancy sensing and other surveilence have no place in a wireless communications specification.
  - bluGill 5y ago
    That isn't needed, anyone who cares to can figure that part out. Cameras are cheap enough to put them up and leave them, and you can figure occupancy in many ways. Breaking into your house to place hidden cameras would not be hard - I don't know anything about where you live or your house, but I can confidently say I could get in if I wanted to. (lock picks are not hard to get, and it only takes a few days of observation to figure out when you leave)
- funklute 5y ago
  > What an absolutely ridiculously ignorant statement to make. Why is that an ignorant statement? It's comparing to what one might consider the "gold standard" of spying, so it seems quite a relevant thing to consider if one is after an objective estimate of how much worse wifi sensing might be...
tagoregrtst 5y ago
I cant see through walls with a lightbulb. I can with wifi. This standard makes my wifi router into an internet connected, closed source blob, light bulb and camera that is impossible to obscure (without killing my internet connection). Sure, I can wire my whole house for ethernet. And, while I’m behind the drywall, I might as well rip off all the drywall put a layer of Al. Here’s a business idea - drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router. EDIT: made wifi’s ability to see through walls explicit per _jal’s comment.
- transpute 5y ago
  > drywall with aluminum fibers embedded QuietRock has drywall that combines soundproofing with RF shielding (steel plate), but it's expensive and targeted at military use cases, https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530RF_datasheet_0.pdf https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530R.... Aluminum radiant barrier can be layered with standard drywall. There is conductive carbon paint for RF shielding, e.g. http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-residential-bedroom/ http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-resid... & https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html Other materials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926
- _jal 5y ago
  To put a slightly finer point on it, I can't see through your walls with my lightbulb, but I probably can see through your walls with my router. Your creepy neighbor in the apartment next door is getting a new toy.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz have decent wall penetration, but 60GHz doesn't. It can bounce off walls to get around corners, so it doesn't necessarily need line of sight.
    - transpute 5y ago
aaron695 5y ago

zeepzeep 5y ago

> It's not just for spying on your cat. Can we stop downplaying privacy issues please?

EveYoung 5y ago
Not trying to be provocative, but how is this any worse than existing cameras or motion sensors?
- fsflover 5y ago
  Do you have those at home?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  RF is far less hindered by stuff like walls.
- justaj 5y ago
  With cameras and motion sensors you more or less know how they'll be used and as a user you can choose to disable them (or at the very least block them if you can't disable them). With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether. Added to that, I'll bet that most people wouldn't even begin to imagine that WiFi could be used for sensing people, and they'll continue using WiFi without being aware for the grave privacy implications.
  - refulgentis 5y ago
    There's no reason to assume any of that.
  - Ginden 5y ago
    > With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether. It's rather unreasonable to think that you won't be able to turn off band on router. Especially given fact that 60Ghz is heavily shielded by _doors_, so any usable router would require fallback 2.4/5/6 Ghz connectivity.
    - transpute 5y ago
      802.11bf Wi-Fi 7 Sensing works with all frequencies, 2.4 and up. Even if Neighbor 2 turns off their router, Neighbor 1 could passively use the radio waves from Neighbor 3's router to surveil reflections from Neighbor 2, including keyboard typing, heartrate/breathing, location and physical activity. Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493
      - judge2020 5y ago
        The problem with this neighbor-spying fear is that "complex math using data from radio waves to sense stuff" is already possible and readily available by anyone willing to study and put in the world of building it, wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics.
        jsmcgd 5y ago
        > wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics It makes it suddenly ubiquitous when all new WiFi devices use the new standard.
        pizza 5y ago
        Removing the PhD-level knowledge requirement from this particular mode of being an asshole doesn't sound like much of an improvement
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- riddleronroof 5y ago
  Your next door neighbor’s wifi will know your every movement, and can probably image it too. End of privacy within closed doors.
  - jagger27 5y ago
    This is hyperbole. 60GHz cannot penetrate walls and closed doors. 2.4GHz and 5GHz lack the resolution to image you, especially if your adversary only has control of one AP. There are already tons of side channel attacks with existing WiFi and Bluetooth that reveal when someone is in the area. Your neighbour could already be tracking your devices, for all you know.
    - transpute 5y ago
      Here are 400 research papers on Wi-Fi sensing with 2.4/5Ghz, https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external
      - riddleronroof 5y ago
        Thank you! Also, I can lid the device in a drawer. It’s greatly different than tracking exactly what I’m doing in any room. Also, consider flats next to each other.
bluGill 5y ago
Sure, can privacy advocates stop down playing what we lose because we value privacy though? There needs to be a balance, location information will be very useful for a lot of things, but only if we have it fully implemented. I want things to sense when I fall and call for help for me. (If I was at a big risk I'd have a button, but for the average young person the risk is non-zero but very small). I want my home automation stuff to figure out where they are and configure themselves. I want my routers to suggest that I'd get better coverage by moving it. Yes there is privacy concerns and they need to be addressed, but don't lose the good with it.
- camgunz 5y ago
  I think we're all being a little maximalist here? I think it's fair to say this article's focus is on the tech, so it doesn't discuss the cool stuff (incredible VR experience, sci-fi like gesture apps) or the bad stuff (Google knows when you scratch your ass). I think it's reasonable to read an article that doesn't mention any usage restrictions, look at the track record of tech, and worry about the privacy implications. The Verge includes a whole section on stuff you agree to when purchasing a new laptop when reviewing them. Maybe it's a good idea for us to start insisting on some level of privacy regulation on new tech. This is purely regulatory right, nothing preventing things like VR--just preventing FB from knowing everything you're doing while using their VR headset, and selling that information to others. Maybe that creates an economic constraint, but this seems like a choice consumers can make. For example Amazon sells 2 versions of every Kindle: ad supported and not.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    It's starting to feel like the #1 go-forward privacy law needs to be a mandatory opt-in choice requirement, with a viable refuse option. It can be asked once at the device level, but regulated information needs to be specified at the highest level (e.g. "location information about an individual"), and then the concrete technical implementation left unspecified. "Does it, or does it not?" is more important than "How?" Because legislation specifying "How?" will always lag technology by decades. (But then again, this probably should have been done in the mid-90s, once it was apparent which way cookies were going)
kingcharles 5y ago
Clearly you've not met my cat.

zinekeller 5y ago

> You can "sense" with a lot more resolution if you use a camera and light bulb. (Visible) Light has a frequency of around 400-790 THz, which explains why it has a inherently better resolution.

jagger27 5y ago
Yep!
transpute 5y ago
https://www.rtinsights.com/li-fi-a-new-wireless-alternative-for-cars/ https://www.rtinsights.com/li-fi-a-new-wireless-alternative-... > Li-Fi connections are broadcast over the air through a light-emitting diodes (LED) broadcaster and support rates up to 100Gbit/s ... Li-Fi can also serve to identify an object’s indoor position more accurately than Wi-Fi or GPS used today (less than 2cm and less than 3 degrees of orientation while it is providing real-time localization (less than 34ms). This accuracy is vital in multiple applications such as navigation In-Door Robots and Drones, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Gaming, among others ... it cannot go through walls, and thus a private local area network (LAN) can be created by lighting up a closed room ... Any organization that needs to keep information within the four walls, such as military bases and banks, can use the technology to keep data restricted to a single room.
- causi 5y ago
  There's potential for visible-light networking but the Li-Fi people in particular are complete garbage. They claim visible light travels faster than radio waves and say Li-Fi is a hundred times faster than wi-fi but their thousand dollar router can only do 100Mb/s. They also rip off the Wi-Fi Alliance logo.
  - transpute 5y ago
    That's disappointing, sounds like they need competition.
  - cassepipe 5y ago

_trampeltier 5y ago

Yes and no. So you have to have a cable again to every room (for the AP), because the wifi signal can't go thru walls? I hope then you can dissable the lower frequencys, because now you have 5 or more APs in your appartement.

mulmen 5y ago

So if I don’t want anyone taking a WiFi “photo” of me on the throne I should put up aluminum foil curtains?

ackbar03 5y ago
Wear a tin foil hat. And take a photo of yourself anyways cause a guy on the throne with a tin foil hat on sounds hilarious
- kingcharles 5y ago
  I think there is a subreddit for it.
EMM_386 5y ago
Watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxWiU_v9Qs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxWiU_v9Qs

MrYellowP 5y ago

RF_Savage 5y ago
But do those cameras and lightbulbs come with a industry standard specification for occupancy sensing. Occupancy sensing and other surveilence have no place in a wireless communications specification.
- bluGill 5y ago
  That isn't needed, anyone who cares to can figure that part out. Cameras are cheap enough to put them up and leave them, and you can figure occupancy in many ways. Breaking into your house to place hidden cameras would not be hard - I don't know anything about where you live or your house, but I can confidently say I could get in if I wanted to. (lock picks are not hard to get, and it only takes a few days of observation to figure out when you leave)
funklute 5y ago
> What an absolutely ridiculously ignorant statement to make. Why is that an ignorant statement? It's comparing to what one might consider the "gold standard" of spying, so it seems quite a relevant thing to consider if one is after an objective estimate of how much worse wifi sensing might be...

tagoregrtst 5y ago

I cant see through walls with a lightbulb. I can with wifi. This standard makes my wifi router into an internet connected, closed source blob, light bulb and camera that is impossible to obscure (without killing my internet connection). Sure, I can wire my whole house for ethernet. And, while I’m behind the drywall, I might as well rip off all the drywall put a layer of Al. Here’s a business idea - drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router. EDIT: made wifi’s ability to see through walls explicit per _jal’s comment.

transpute 5y ago
> drywall with aluminum fibers embedded QuietRock has drywall that combines soundproofing with RF shielding (steel plate), but it's expensive and targeted at military use cases, https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530RF_datasheet_0.pdf https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530R.... Aluminum radiant barrier can be layered with standard drywall. There is conductive carbon paint for RF shielding, e.g. http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-residential-bedroom/ http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-resid... & https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html Other materials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926
_jal 5y ago
To put a slightly finer point on it, I can't see through your walls with my lightbulb, but I probably can see through your walls with my router. Your creepy neighbor in the apartment next door is getting a new toy.
- jagger27 5y ago
  2.4GHz, 5GHz, and 6GHz have decent wall penetration, but 60GHz doesn't. It can bounce off walls to get around corners, so it doesn't necessarily need line of sight.
  - transpute 5y ago

aaron695 5y ago