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> Because mmWave radar doesn’t process visual light, what it sees is not personally identifiable. With machine learning improvements, identification and more a
by transpute 5y ago
> Because mmWave radar doesn’t process visual light, what it sees is not personally identifiable.
With machine learning improvements, identification and more are possible. From a 2021 paper on IEEE 802.11bf Wi-Fi Sensing, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14918.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14918.pdf
> Indeed, it has been shown that SENS-based classifiers can infer privacy-critical information such as keyboard typing, gesture recognition and activity tracking ... since Wi- Fi signals can penetrate hard objects and can be used without the presence of light, end-users may not even realize they are being tracked .. individuals should be provided the opportunity to opt out of SENS services – to avoid being monitored and tracked by the Wi-Fi devices around them. This would require the widespread introduction of reliable SENS algorithm for human or animal identification.
Prior discussion of WiFi Sensing:
Jan 2022, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901587
May 2021, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493
400+ research papers on wireless activity sensing, showing steady improvement in detection techniques, https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external
Today, specialist devices or targeted attacks can monitor human activity through walls and closed doors. But that's a world away from the ubiquitous transparency scheduled for commodity WiFi 7 in 2024. If regulators or lawyers don't step in, homes and some businesses may need RF shielding.
- waterproof 5y agoYeah. Up front they say: > what it sees is not personally identifiable Then later on in the article: > [the new HomePod could] [detect] the user's identity based on their gait, height, and physical profile Uh-huh. …did they read their own article?
- kwertyoowiyop 5y agoIt just depends on whether they’re talking to Congress or the Police.
- parsimo2010 5y agoRight on. The whole "mm wave radar is detail rich but gives privacy" line is a contradiction. Any data that is detailed enough to be useful is detailed enough to be a privacy concern. While it might not be the same as leaking nude photos from someone's camera, radar data is something that needs to be carefully thought out. Radar data from a car can provide information about people's driving behavior even without location data- do they follow too close, do they make reckless lane changes into tight spots, do they exceed the regular flowing traffic speed, etc. Radar data from inside a building used to track people can tell when you are at your desk or somewhere else, who you congregate with in the break room, how long you spend in the bathroom, etc. If it's detailed enough to assist you, that data can also be used to monitor you.
- smegsicle 5y ago> leaking nude photos from someone's camera whatever happened to that meme about common ccd cameras picking up uv images that make out details through eg swimsuits, but hopefully filtered and removed in software before making it to the images?
- dheera 5y agoWhy not just fix the swimsuits? Seems like a much more straightforward solution.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- doctor_eval 5y agoThe problem was not swimsuits. It was any clothing that was relatively thin. Swimsuits was just an example. In any case why would we be required to don tinfoil suits every time we go to the airport?
- dheera 5y agoI mean, the material has a bug that wasn't discovered until recently, so we fix the bug and re-deploy the material. It's that simple. Just embed some carbon fibers or something in the swim suit, there are tons of ways to block UV. It's like if your car seatbelts have a bug you issue a product recall. Same thing.
- hornej 5y agoI agree that if all of a sudden our routers started mapping out the world like in the Batman movie that would be a bad thing.
- dathinab 5y agoHm, I the EU due to GDPR this services are required to make you opt in to them. Does that mean many of this applications are outright illegal in the EU, due to not having a good way to handle the case where the user doesn't opt-in?
- dathinab 5y agoThinking about it a bit more in Germany there is a law about spy devices. Most spying on users through websites etc. doesn't fall under it do it being formulated in the pre-internet age. But would WIFI-7 enabled routers fall under it? It's not complete unrealistic that it might happen. The think is this law is rather strict in how illegal spy devices are to be handled => destructive disposal. (Required, by anyone owning such a device). That could be quite a big fall out. This law did hit some IoT devices, like some toys with integrated voice recording.
- hungryforcodes 5y agoWell it's nice that the most well behaving countries (not that they are THAT well behaved) play nice -- but for countries in mmmm...Asia, Africa and the Middle East this will be a boon, sadly.
- dathinab 5y agoYes I would say WIFI 7 falls under irresponsible technology.
- john567 5y agoMy reaction as well. Given how many ways there are to uniquely identify individuals this isn't a selling point for the tech. It's just a different kind of camera and of course it can identify people it's just that it will not reproduce a picture of people's faces to do so.
- rvnx 5y agoNot yet, because the resolution is too small for now but you can count on progress. Thinking more globally, couldn't 5G mmWave make it possible to get to know exactly how people are moving ? (let's say, someone gets out of his house, the government can know it in realtime, even without a phone, because the mmWave could map its position).
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>couldn't 5G mmWave make it possible to get to know exactly how people are moving If you've got the signal density to illuminate the stuff you want to look at there's no reason you couldn't.
- melpomenestits 5y ago
- KaiserPro 5y agoI was about to come and say the same thing. Its perfectly possible to create feature descriptors for 60gig radar, and use it to image rooms, things and possibly people. Its a privacy problem we currently are trying to overcome in AR. The problem is that because feature descriptors are so small, researchers assume that they don't contain PII. So its going to take a scandal before its taken seriously. Given that most of FAANG are making some sort of 3d map, I'm sure we are going to get pictures of people's bedrooms leaking soon enough.
- mjmj 5y agoNot to the same degree but roomba seemed to survive mapping peoples houses privacy problems, and everyone seems to love Alexa. The general public prefers features over privacy.
- KaiserPro 5y agoThey certainly do, up to the point when they start to see the downsides. Facebook for example. It took a few years, but people are now wary of information being grabbed by them.
- lmilcin 5y agoThey can already identify a person from typing, gait or even how you move your mouse. It is either very dishonest or extremely stupid for an expert to say mm waves can't be used to identify a person.
- marbu 5y agoThis statement about privacy of mmWave radar you raised made me wonder if someone haven't already tried to implement SAR[1] with mmWave radar, and quick search reveals that indeed, this is being looked into, eg.: - https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9136646 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?arnumber=9136646 - https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.00636.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/2011.00636.pdf That said, it doesn't mean that every mmWave radar could work as SAR. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic-aperture_radar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic-aperture_radar
- Sanzig 5y agoFundamentally, any radar that can be configured to capture coherent data (ie: amplitude and phase rather than just amplitude) can be a SAR. SAR is basically post-hoc digital beamforming to sharpen the image. If you have amplitude and phase information (which you can get if your radar can be configured to output raw quadrature baseband) you can do SAR processing. There's no fancy hardware required, SAR is largely a software problem. You do also need information about where the sensor was located at each pulse, but it doesn't have to be extremely precise - there are algorithms that do iterative processing to accomplish motion compensation.
- r_hoods_ghost 5y agoAnd lets be honest here, mmWave radar won't be used on its' own, but instead will be used to in conjunction with visible light and other forms of privacy violating sensing technology to increase the resolution of the panopticon.
- nintendo1889 5y agoWe're closer to the star trek future of "sensors" that can sense a planet's surface from 1000s of miles away.
- hwillis 5y agoWhat an insane thing to say. 60 GHz is more than enough to get completely recognizable images with a sufficient transceiver https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Millimeter-wave-40-60GHz-cylindrical-images-of-a-mannequin-with-concealed-items-The_fig1_310830917 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Millimeter-wave-40-60GHz... There's a huge difference between a phased array scanner and the transceivers described in the OP, but mm waves are absolutely not "privacy-preserving"
- MisterTea 5y ago> If regulators or lawyers don't step in, homes and some businesses may need RF shielding. Creating a new job market: RF shielding installation.