Ooh, let me help you over-dramatize. One great way to radio-fingerprint people is when they use a point-of-sale device like a credit card checkout or an ATM or

Ooh, let me help you over-dramatize. One great way to radio-fingerprint people is when they use a point-of-sale device like a credit card checkout or an ATM or a pay-at-the-pump gas station. Put a camera on it (if you don't have one already), and you get (1) a good picture of someone's face; (2) their name and maybe address; (3) a unique way to identify them (credit card number); and (4) a short list of their possible radio IDs. Within a few encounters, you can be 99.9% sure which radio IDs belong to them. Put this system in, oh, 7-11s, Shell gas stations, and pay ATMs, and pretty soon you'll have a match for a good chunk of the population. Plus of course it gets easier as you go along -- the more people you have affirmatively identified in a location, the easier it is to narrow down the rest. The product is a subscription database that will show you a map of your surroundings with a mug shot for each person nearby. Click the picture and you can find out anything that can be learned from their name, address, magazine subscriptions, purchase history etc -- their politics, income, education, interests, relatives, etc. If you've managed to link their email yet, you can also get all their recent online activity ... OK, maybe banks and gas companies aren't that evil, or at least would quickly be stopped. So let me ask this: what kind of radio-fingerprint database could someone build with a botnet? You control a webcam, a wireless card, and unencrypted access to the user's internet browsing. Where does that get you? (Probably all of this is a bit silly, but it's fun to imagine what could be done with existing technology ...)