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Xfinity using WiFi signals in your house to detect motion
- Oreols 1y agoIf it is what I think it is -> I worked on it at Technicolor. The tech is very cool, the initial pitch was to fine tune wifi performance to get the best bandwidth\coverage ratio for a particular customer. But indeed, during testing we quickly discovered that we can map apartments and houses to some extent. You knew when someone was on the toilet for example.
- foxyv 1y agoOkay, so buy my own router and then put the ISP one in a metal box. Gotcha!
- CHUCKEESH 1y ago[flagged]
- CHUCKZZZ 1y ago[flagged]
- theturtle 1y ago...and promising to give it to cops. Turn that thing off.
- sciencesama 1y agois ther an adblock for https ? can we do subdomain https ad blocking ?
- tonetegeatinst 1y agoNote that according to the website: "WiFi Motion is off by default."
- jacobgkau 1y ago> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are going to be able to tell law enforcement/courts whether anyone was home at a certain time or not.
- Ashkee 1y agoIt’s tricky when privacy gets tangled with law enforcement requests. If you want better control over your data, tools like HiFiveStar can help you monitor what’s being shared. It made me feel a bit more on top of my online footprint.
- 57473m3n7Fur7h3 1y agoAnd also how many people are currently in the house, right at this moment. Maybe even which rooms of the house those people are in.
- schiffern 1y agoWiFi can also be used to detect heartrate and breathing, which can leak additional ad-targeting information related to activity, arousal, or agitation. https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/7/2111 https://www.mdpi.com/1424-8220/24/7/2111
- shostack 1y agoI am curious if, with the number and quality of signals they can capture from this, how uniquely they can identify individuals and determine things like age, gender, weight, etc. Particularly when analyzed probabalistically with other household level data they likely have.
- josho 1y agoThe solution here shouldn't be technical; it should be legal. If we rely on the technical path, Comcast can achieve the same by how many active IPv6 addresses are in use. Even if you aren't using your phone, the device is going to be constantly pinging services like email, and your ISP can use that to piece together how many people are at home. If we rely on legal protection, then not only Comcast, but all ISPs will be prohibited from spying on their customers. Ideally the legislation would be more broad and stop other forms of commercial/government surveillance, but I can't imagine a world where Congress could actually achieve something that widely helpful for regular citizens.
- yborg 1y agoI remember reading this paper when it came out, didn't think it would be commercializable, and here we are. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2486001.2486039 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2486001.2486039
- hopelite 1y agoI have a sneaky suspicion this is not something that Xfinity/Comcast just woke up one day and thought they should implement. This has all the hallmarks of the treasonous surveillance state injecting itself to instrumentalize corporations to claim they’re not violating the supreme law called the Constitution if they simply make others commit the treasonous crimes against the people. Because we all know, of course, the Constitution only applies to the federal government, right? If mega-corporation USA Inc uses its shell company Comcast to violate the Supreme law of the land in a treasonous manner, then you are of course SOL asa mere citizen since they aren’t the federal government and the Constitution does not apply to them. In case it want clear, that was sarcasm.
- schiffern 1y agoI miss the old days when this would come off like a crazy rant, rather than being the evening news. In case people missed it: https://theconversation.com/from-help-to-harm-how-the-government-is-quietly-repurposing-everyones-data-for-surveillance-254690 https://theconversation.com/from-help-to-harm-how-the-govern... https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/even-government-thinks-it-should-stop-buying-corporate-surveillance-data https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/07/even-government-thinks... https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/28/government-buying-your-data-00143742 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/02/28/government...
- sojsurf 1y agoI was just reading up on wifi 7 today. It sounds like the spec was designed with WIFI sensing in mind.
- Tijdreiziger 1y agoThat’s speculation. In the article, you can see that it’s meant as a pseudo-alarm system. It’s plausible that someone at Comcast thought this is a value-add. (Netgear already offered this as a feature on their routers, it’s not a novel concept.) Even within tech circles, lots of people aren’t worried about privacy and even have indoor cameras in their homes.
- chimeracoder 1y agoOne takeaway from this is that there's a strong privacy case for disabling the built-in wireless network from your ISP-provided modem/router and using your own, to reduce the number of ways that your ISP can surveil you.
- chatmasta 1y agoThat’s always a good idea, but they’ll still be able to tell when someone is home because the outbound internet traffic will increase. And don’t forget to set your DNS to a non-ISP resolver.
- calvinmorrison 1y agoSo you need fake upstream downstream traffic, put your router in a lead box, use DNS over https, and then all that for nothing because the Amazon router was backdoored by the NSA too
- chimeracoder 1y ago> That’s always a good idea, but they’ll still be able to tell when someone is home because the outbound internet traffic will increase. Sure, but not necessarily who is home, since they won't have the MAC address of your device(s) connecting. Also, traffic volumes are a lot noisier of signals than you might think, given how much automated and background stuff we have these days.
- sneak 1y agoSNI is not encrypted. You need a box downstream of your ISP devices that encrypts all traffic out over a VPN. This is what I do.
- jeffbee 1y agoThis is piled on top of the existing strong case for all Comcast wifi equipment being hot garbage. If some confluence of poor regulations has led you to being stuck with Comcast, the least you can do for yourself is get your own DOCSIS modem and routers and access points that you control.
- 1y ago
- EvanAnderson 1y agoI don't want my ISP doing this to me, but it sounds like something pretty cool to do myself. Does anybody know what the current state of "self-hosting" this kind of functionality is?
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoI am also super interested for the personal use case. What is the resolution? Can I track my cat through the house? See when they go to the feeder? Count my own bathroom visits?
- Aurornis 1y ago> What is the resolution? Can I track my cat through the house? See when they go to the feeder? Count my own bathroom visits? None of the above. The setup process has you select 3 reference devices. You should pick the devices so that your normal motion areas are between the device and the router. The router then watches the WiFi signals from those devices. If they fluctuate more than baseline, it's assumed that something is moving around in the area. It's a threshold detection that can serve as a crude motion sensor for home/away purposes.
- 0cf8612b2e1e 1y agoNuts. Less interesting than the claims of monitoring heart rate, but still potentially some applications “for free” if it just needs to analyze signal strength from devices I already have. Theoretically could put it directly onto my OpenWRT router and make it available from there.
- HeavenFox 1y agoFor home / away purposes it's easier to just detect if your phone is connected to the network. I built something like that before by shipping the log from my UniFi controller to a RPi and listen for events where my phone's MAC address connect or disconnnect.
- 1y ago
- VariousPrograms 1y agoOne more reason not to use an ISP router, although in this case most of us are at minimum carrying around GPS homing beacons in our pocket so the carriers already know where we are.
- OptionOfT 1y agoAnd now we also know the reason why they give away unlimited data for free when you use their router, but not when you want to use your own router.
- ajcp 1y agoI can turn off the WiFi on my ISPs (Cox) router. I just have it port-forward everything into my own wifi-router where I manage it from there.
- femiagbabiaka 1y agoXfinity won't give folks in certain locales (maybe everywhere in the US?) unlimited bandwidth unless they use their modem/router. This seems like a good reason that practice should be illegal.
- reaperducer 1y agoI use a cellular connection for my internet, but my apartment building is wired with Xfinity, and probably 90% of people use it. Naturally, there is no way for me to opt out of this.
- BarryMilo 1y agoTime to make your apartment a faraday cage!
- Tijdreiziger 1y agoRF-blocking paint exists.
- kube-system 1y agoAnd contrary to popular belief, neither it nor a faraday cage blocks RF. They attenuate it, to varying degrees.
- zzo38computer 1y agoThere is still the question of how much the attenuation is and if it can prevent the detection. There is also the issue if you want to receive other radio signals such as AM radio, FM radio, amateur radio, etc.
- bikenaga 1y agoDoes your apartment lease require that you use Comcast's hardware? When I signed up for Xfinity years ago I wanted to use my own hardware (NetGear cable modem, Buffalo Airstation with DD-WRT). I forget now whether I had to walk through the activation over the phone with a tech - I vaguely recall having to provide some information about the modem, which was one of the models listed as supported on their use-your-own-hardware web page - but the whole thing was easy. Other people have mentioned that not using Comcast's stuff means that certain features won't be available, but I don't care. I don't have huge bandwidth needs, for instance.
- jklinger410 1y agoI had a conspiracy theorist tell me one time this is why they removed all the lead paint. It never quite made sense that kids were actually eating lead chips. I know lead is bad for you, maybe a coincidence.
- linsomniac 1y ago>It never quite made sense that kids were actually eating lead chips You know that lead tastes sweet, right?
- jklinger410 1y agoI did not! I've never eaten lead lol
- meepmorp 1y agoApart from what the sibling poster said about lead (II acetate) having a sweet taste, little kids will put literally anything in their mouths. You ain't lived till you had to get dog shit out of a baby's mouth.
- Aurornis 1y agoEven old lead paint didn't have a lot of lead in it. A thin layer of lead paint with <1% lead does nearly nothing for WiFi signals. We use lead for shielding ionizing radiation like gamma rays, but even that uses a lot more lead than you'd find in paint. Not all "radiation" is the same thing.
- jklinger410 1y agoGood to know! Thanks for clarifying.
- aurizon 1y agoThere is a pattern called 'Pica' where kids gnaw on stuff, windows, ledges etc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pica_(disorder)
- rancar2 1y agoThis reminds of an MIT-licensed library that was Vibe-coded and released three weeks ago. The source is available here: https://github.com/ruvnet/wifi-densepose https://github.com/ruvnet/wifi-densepose
- Havoc 1y agoThought I could integrate that into home assistant...till I got to the 78% GPU utilization part. Bit heavy for 24/7
- transpute 1y agoSensing is (sadly) part of Wi-Fi 7. If you have a recent Intel, AMD or Qualcomm device from the past few years, it's likely physically capable of detecting human presence and/or activity (e.g. breathing rate). It can also be done with $20 ESP32 devices + OSS firmware and _possibly_ with compromised radio basebands.
- heywoods 1y ago[flagged]
- anitil 1y agoIf you had a particular idea from the LLM that you wanted to share people would be more receptive, but just dumping the whole output comes across as intellectually lazy
- tomhow 1y agoPlease don't do this. Whether it's LLM-generated or not, we don't want big blocks of text from elsewhere pasted into comments here. Please at least try to craft original human thoughts.
- jml7c5 1y agoCommercial use of WiFi sensing predates WiFi 7 (a notable example is Philips smart bulbs with presence detection). AFAIK WiFi 7 just includes an amendment by the 802.11bf working group to improve performance.
- al_borland 1y agoWas anyone asking for their network to be able to sense their breathing rate? What does this enable that actually improves people’s lives? This is the kind of stuff that pushes me to pull a Ron Swanson and throw my technology in the dumpster.
- transpute 1y agoSimilar technology has been quietly in use for a while, with falling cost, e.g. "Inside a $1 radar motion sensor", https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40834349 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40834349 (100 comments). Commercialization gives consumers and regulators the opportunity to express their opinions on the sudden and unsolicited transparency of the walls, floors and ceilings of their homes and businesses.
- exabrial 1y agoYeah, disable that wifi on an device not controlled by you
- damascus 1y agoIf they make the firmware there's no guarantee they aren't still doing it just without a broadcast SSID going along with it.
- exabrial 1y agoI guess technically they don't need to use wifi, could just have a hidden microwave chip in it and use a non-wifi detection sysatem. Great. Now super paranoid lol.
- 0xbadcafebee 1y agoI'm sure people will want to make it seem like Comcast is doing something evil here, but they're not: > Comcast does not monitor the motion and/or notifications generated by the service. > This feature is currently only available for select Xfinity Internet customers as part of an early access preview. > WiFi Motion is off by default. Features like this at Comcast are typically one or two engineers on a random team coming up with a cool idea, testing it out, and if it works, they ask if they can roll it out en-masse. If it's just a software or server/backend thing and it doesn't have any negative impact, it gets accepted. Despite their terrible customer service and business practices, they do some cool stuff sometimes. They also release a fair bit of home-grown stuff as open source, which is expensive and time-consuming, but [they hope] it attracts engineers.
- unit_circle 1y agoIt's all well and good until the MBAs get a hold of it... Technology doesn't exist in a vacuum.
- avonmach 1y agoor a third party
- Sephr 1y ago> does not monitor motion This doesn't mean that they can't monitor motion (e.g. as compelled via NSL). This product sorely needs E2EE.
- Aurornis 1y agoIn case anyone is skimming the headline and comments: It's not enabled by default. This is an optional feature that you have to find, turn on, and then select up to 3 WiFi devices to use as reference signals: > Activating the feature > WiFi Motion is off by default. To activate the feature, perform the following steps: The actual title of the article is "Using WiFi Motion in the Xfinity app".
- snickerbockers 1y ago"...for you." --Bane These days it is never safe to assume that opting-in does anything more than making some of the information that's being collected regardless available. Although I actually agree with you that it probably isn't doing anything by default to the extent that it isn't doing anything yet because it's new they haven't worked out how to monetize it.
- ocdtrekkie 1y agoI think at least right now this is reasonable: It's off by default, and if you choose to turn it on, they don't use it for anything themselves, but Comcast is disclosing that it may be forced to give the data over with a legal request. If I was advising Comcast, I'd tell them this is a dumb thing to introduce because just the perception of bad behavior is not worth any particular benefit, but whatever. I can't imagine someone deciding they want a Comcast plan because it offers this, and there's no way for them to monetize it without almost assured legal backlash.
- 93po 1y agoThe visibility of the feature for users may be "off by default" but that means nothing in terms of what Comcast is actually collecting, storing, and sending to third parties.
- 1970-01-01 1y ago>It's not enabled by default. Here's how this level of scum works in reality: At first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3017694 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3017694 Eventually: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709991 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39709991
- jml7c5 1y agoThe term for this sort of thing is "WiFi sensing". Relevant HN thread from 2021 ("The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901587 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901587 As far as I can tell, devices were already on the market when that thread was made. 802.11bf was standardization to help along interoperability and future products.
- lulzury 1y agoDoes wrapping their modem in foil work at defeating this thing in any meaningful way? I have my own router.
- transpute 1y agoISP routers should have an admin option to disable WiFi. Grounded fine copper mesh can attenuate RF and maintain cooling.
- sneak 1y agoProbably. Even better would be opening it up and grounding the antenna.
- tzs 1y agoEasier is to simply not enable this feature if you don't want to use it.
- johnklos 1y agoI've been telling people for ages to not trust ISP provided hardware. Notice the vague language here which means they reserve the right to share private information for anything that might be called an investigation, or for any dispute which includes them (didn't pay your bill?), or a subpoena. Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena. Plus, sharing isn't limited to a court or law enforcemnt agency - they reserve the right to share information with any third party. This is scary, particularly considering how the current administration wants to weaponize everything they possibly can.
- bdcravens 1y agoScary, but is it any scarier than the status quo before this feature was implemented? The fidelity of the data, perhaps, but it's more or less been the standard that our footprint where we intersect with a third-party is no longer ours to control.
- mrtesthah 1y agoThe status quo after January 2025 looks nothing like it did before.
- pixxel 1y ago[dead]
- hiddencost 1y agoAnd that's a reason to give up privacy?
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> is it any scarier than the status quo before this feature was implemented Yes. It's an invasion of privacy inside peoples' homes.
- 1y ago
- jrockway 1y agoThis is a neat feature when it's your own device that you control, but not so great when they "disclose information generated by WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you." I wanted to talk about how responsible WiFi router software authors can make things local-only (and I've done that in the past; no way to get this information even if I wanted it). But this is always temporary when "they" can push an update to your router at any time. One day the software is trustworthy, they next day it's not, via intentional removal of privacy features or by virtue of a dumb bug that you probably should have written a unit test for. Comcast is getting attention for saying they're doing this, but anyone who pushes firmware updates to your WiFi router can do this tomorrow if they feel like it. A strong argument in favor of "maybe I'll just run NixOS on an Orange Pi as my router", because at least you get the final say in what code runs.
- sneak 1y agoWhat is the escalation path for replacing or removing the corrupt public utility commissions that allow these fraudulent and unethical monopolists to continue operating? We have endless cases of Comcast and others criminally abusing their granted monopoly and the PUCs simply allowing them to run roughshod over consumers. How do we fix it?
- jl6 1y agoThe race is on to find the cheapest/easiest decoy that can simulate such motion (because if everything is moving, then nothing is moving). A tube man in every corner?
- transpute 1y agoThe race is already on for biometric fingerprinting via WiFi Sensing, e.g. via heart rate.
- smallerize 1y agoThis is actually a feature of the Plume wifi mesh devices. https://support.plume.com/s/article/Sense-Live-View?language=en_US https://support.plume.com/s/article/Sense-Live-View?language... It's also available from any other ISP that uses them, or if you buy your own Plume device and a subscription. It's been there for years. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi-we-test-plumes-new-motion-detection-feature/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi...
- transpute 1y agohttps://staceyoniot.com/the-next-big-wi-fi-standard-is-for-sensing-not-communication/ https://staceyoniot.com/the-next-big-wi-fi-standard-is-for-s... > The IEEE plans to take the concepts for Wi-Fi sensing from the proprietary system built by Cognitive (which has been licensed to Qualcomm and also Plume) and create a standard interface for how the chips calculate interference that determines where in space an object is. Other firmware sensing capability: https://www.cognitivesystems.com/caregiver/ https://www.cognitivesystems.com/caregiver/ - Activity Tracking: Detects movement patterns to identify changes in daily routines to spot health concerns - Sleep Monitoring: Tracks sleep duration, wake times and nighttime interruptions to assess sleep quality - Anomaly Detection: Establishes household baseline to proactively identify unusual patterns & changes in activity
- amazingman 1y agoPut your cable modem in bridge mode and use your own WiFi. I used to recommend using your own cable modem as well, but these days you have to use the Xfinity modem to avoid overages if you're in a market with data caps. Comcast has a stellar network operations unit, but their business operations are creepy and exploitative.
- Banditoz 1y agoIs their network good, though? They try to keep my data in their network as long as possible affecting latency to certain places, which is significantly worse than what fiber providers in my area do.
- pyuser583 1y agoIt’s creepy there is an Exclude Small Pets mode.
- daft_pink 1y agoAre there any kits to place my comcast modem in a faraday cage?
- Squeeeez 1y agoPeople here claiming "stick the ISP modem in a microwave oven, put on a tin foil hat and use your own device" -- do you truly, 100% trust that nobody but you has access to said "own" device?
- transpute 1y agoStart by implementing AP per-client authentication for Wi-Fi client devices.
- notepad0x90 1y agoWorth mentioning that unlike some ISPS Xfinity does let you use your own DOCSIS modems, which is the ideal way of using an ISP. ISP provided gateway's WIFI is not ideal for privacy, security and performance. Comcast in general has a long history of snooping around and messing with users' traffic. Not that the alternatives are much better. Regular folks are screwed on this matter. But perhaps for HNers setting up your own trusted WIFI AP and routing it (and all other traffic) through an internet gateway that routes your traffic over a secure channel (whatever that is for you, Tor, VPN services, VPN over your own cloud/vps,etc..) is ideal. It goes without saying, your DNS traffic should also not be visible to the ISPs. Keep in mind that they sell all this data (including the motion data) not just to law enforcement but to arbitrary well-paying data brokers and other clients.
- abuani 1y agoI really wish Xfinity focused on providing a reliable service instead of building out next gen surveillance machines
- tjpnz 1y ago>WiFi Motion is not a home security service and is not professionally monitored. That's funny because it does sound like they suggest it be used as such.
- snickerbockers 1y agoOkay I'm as concerned about privasy as everybody else is here but i also gotta admire that its pretty neat they can actually do that. Are they measuring the signal echo like what radar does? If they controlled both the receiver and transmitter i wouldn't be as surprised to find out they can tell when something crosses between them and form a 2-dimensional mesh (like that episode of Star Trek TNG where geordie detects cloaked romulan ships by having starfleet deploy a fleet of ships that send signals back and forth and look for timing variances) but if I'm understanding correctly this is different because they only control a single point in the network? I wonder if they have enough information to make out shapes or if it's just a simple rangefinder?
- thfuran 1y agoIt's far from great for imaging, but it can be done. https://www.zmescience.com/research/inventions/wifi-technology-humans-02112015/ https://www.zmescience.com/research/inventions/wifi-technolo...
- snickerbockers 1y agoHonestly even that is pretty incredible. At the very least that's enough date to count family members, possibly ID them if they have different-shaped bodies, and identify certain activities with obvious silhouettes (eg, sex). I don't think it justifies the impending orwellian hellscape this technology will eventually unleash, but one positive thing about this that has me a bit excited is that this could easily clear up many ambiguities in criminal cases. for example, fairly often a death will get ruled as a suicide but victim's relatives and friends will insist that it must have been a murder; imagine being able to use this technology to definitively prove whether or not there was another party present when the victim died. Or in rape cases where the defendant is protesting their innocence, knowing the body language of the victim and the defendant could be a vital clue because you might be able to observe the victim fighting back. Again, I don't think the positives outweigh the negatives to the point that it could ever justify an invasion of privacy on this scale (you might as well just make everybody let the government set up a thermal camera in their house!) but it is interesting to think about the problems this could solve.
- lrvick 1y agoSoon ICE will have given Comcast enough money to provide a live feed of the neighborhoods they are targeting and where all the bodies are that match the height of their targets. We need to be finding the xfinity wifi hotspots in our neighborhoods, knock on doors, and help people understand the risks they are creating for themselves and their neighbors and how to setup their own routers.
- cs702 1y agoIf you ask the Xfinity managers who came up with this idea whether thieves will be able to buy live information on whether your home is empty from hackers on the dark web, the managers will likely say... nothing. What they will do is look at you with a deer-in-the-headlights expression in their shocked faces. Sigh.
- Terr_ 1y agoThe word "liability" might not always work, but occasionally it makes someone think a little harder about what their company is doing.
- stronglikedan 1y agoA company like Comcast knows more about the liabilities of what they're doing than any of their customers do, guaranteed.
- nmeofthestate 1y agoAny service provided by a connected device can be framed as something "people can buy on the Dark Web". XFinity lets you make HTTP requests to the web via your router. Uh-oh: XFinity decided to sell info on your web requests on the Dark Web.
- buryat 1y ago[flagged]
- nilamo 1y agoIs it nothing? I bet the price is nothing.
- esaym 1y ago> WiFi Motion will function only in areas of your home where you have strong WiFi signals traveling between your gateway and your WiFi-connected devices, and Comcast does not guarantee or warrant performance. It is clearly just monitoring RSSI and everybody's acting like this is some spooky radar based technology.
- mzmzmzm 1y agoReason #293674 to always use your own router and modem as often as possible
- oarla 1y agoJust get your own router and don't use ISP provided router.
- transpute 1y agoSimilar features are planned for consumer routers, see IEEE 802.11bf.
- knetl 1y agoIs Xfinity licensing Wifi Motion™ from Cognitive Systems?[0] "WiFi Motion, Cognitive’s Wi-Fi Sensing solution, is an innovative software platform that leverages AI and sophisticated algorithms to transform existing Wi-Fi signals into a motion sensing network." Another company operating in this space is Origin Wireless. They demonstrated breathing detection with WiFi in 2017[1]. They've since partnered with ISPs to offer a WiFi Sensing "TruShield" home security service.[2] [0]https://www.cognitivesystems.com/ https://www.cognitivesystems.com/ [1]https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-09-origin-wireless-motion-detection-breathing-rate-sensor.html https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-09-origin-wireless-motion-d... [2]https://www.originwirelessai.com/trushield/ https://www.originwirelessai.com/trushield/
- casper14 1y agoYes
- JCM9 1y agoReason 732 why I would never use the network gear provided by an ISP.
- nopenopenope88 1y agoMyself and my buddies worked on it. This might sound ripe with "conspiracy". I know how it's going to sound. Take it for what you will. Initially wanting to know things like, whose in what room, how many people, and what your actively doing, who you socialize with most etc. Been working on this since they bought Skydog/Powercloud. Purposely "helped" design the spec for wifi since Wifi 5 or earlier. How do we get more sensor devices into the home? Build an IoT line of business and make wifi "better". Imagine seeing the the entire USA on a map (comcast "national watchtower" tool), and then seeing what each router can "see", including those xfinity hotspots. One, giant, signal map of devices with tagged metadata such as a percentage associated to "who" owns the device, what the device is, and what apps you have installed, which you are using at this current moment, any health and biometric data in case grandma fell over and can't get up. There is always a hidden SSID transmitting. p0f is nicely preinstalled on the wifi router cpe. Now create the standard firmware RDK for worldwide use purchasing cable/tv networks in other countries. (Sky, IoT companies in Italy). Now give them more ability, like to unlock your home "MyQ" (comcast ventures "investment"), why stop there, get into businesses such as taco bell with LoRaWAN. Add xfinity mobile for that extra juice of seeing all the little SIMS (game) characters on the (very real) map so you can recommend to them how to better schedule their life. It's all there. Now take that same map, and make it global. Attend the next SCTE conference and see it all for yourself. They're proud of it. I thought, I was too.
- transpute 1y agoIn a future Visible Social Network movie, through-wall sensing creators could livestream their own activity telemetry as a global public demo. Everyone would follow suit, or would they? See the movie and find out!
- aurizon 1y ago3 cat feeders(small dispensers) 3 different recurring times, 3 cats = never a dull moment for the FBI on watch...
- p1mrx 1y agoMight be useful for people to investigate hardware mods that disable WiFi on their newer gateways. I have an XB3, but motion detection requires an XB7/XB8: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527521
- djoldman 1y agoI always turn off every feature on every router I don't own and use it in pass through mode.
- SamaraMichi 1y agoCan't help but imagine a reality where this is widespread and people resort to installing radio reflective curtains/decorations that freely move with slight ambient air currents in an effort to scramble the reflections and make it as hard as they can to measure. Something like a belly dance belt around the router could also work.
- transpute 1y agoOther options: - Shielded rooms + wired networking - Shielded rooms + Li-Fi (wireless with light instead of radio) Humans who want some rooms of their house to be non-transparent will need either new construction or to retrofit shielding, e.g. QuietRock drywall.
- fHr 1y agoholy shit we live in a matrix
- godelski 1y agoGreat, I always wanted to - be able to spy on my neighbors - add more surveillance systems into my house - have my neighbors be able to spy on me through my walls I get that there is utility to this thing but come on, they don't even guarantee that the information is private and they say they collect it. Does the boot really taste that good? Why are we so obsessed with surveillance and giving people the power to surveil ourselves? Why are so many devs complicit in developing these tools? Again, I can understand how there's honest and good nature utility to them, but just because something has utility doesn't mean you get to ignore any harm. This trade-off is literally the whole of ethics in engineering. Engineers both create the tools for utopia and the tools for autocracy. The bitter truth is that often tools for autocracies are created while trying to create tools for utopias. But frankly, I'm not convinced this one is in that ambiguous gray zone...
- WillPostForFood 1y agoEngineers both create the tools for utopia and the tools for autocracy. It's the same tool much of the time, including here. Utopia is getting a warning there is an intruder in your residence before you walk in, or better deterring that from happening. Autocracy is the government tracking you in your house.
- godelski 1y agoI agree, but the reason I'm less convinced this is in that gray zone is because, frankly, break-ins are relatively rare. In general, crime is highly localized. So while I'm sure it is useful to some people, I'm quite suspicious that it is not helpful for most people. Maybe gives them peace of mind, but that peace of mind can increase paranoia. We'll just have to see the rates of false positives to false negatives... But I do see this as an extremely useful tool for autocrats, hackers, and abusive relationships. I'm willing to bet that this is used by these malicious actors far more than your average user gets a true positive detection. And we really should be clear, the danger is far more than autocrats.
- transpute 1y ago15 years of research and 5 years of HN discussion. It can always get worse, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901979 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901979 We could use terahertz spectrum to detect specific molecules and in turn use terahertz frequencies and radios as a way to track specific ingredients in food or pollutants in the air Is there a PKD sci-fi story about terahertz-radar smart lock breathalyzer (substances, viruses) with conditional door entry/exit rules?
- class3shock 1y agoNext step it will just be a feature they offer and whether you know of it, use it, or want it, it'll always be on in the background due to you signing a terms of service that lets them. And then it'll not just be in a xfinity router but your tv, phone, etc. Just makes me want to live in a cabin in the woods.
- pilingual 1y agoI was reading Hyatt's Privacy Policy and they mention biometrics (and even genetic information for some reason). Does this mean they can analyze all of my behavior in the hotel room? I'm not about to find out. I really liked Hyatt, too.
- sneak 1y agoThe ER I was seen at a few weeks ago had me sign a consent to use my data to (presumably) train AI.
- kstrauser 1y agoWas it possible to deny it?
- sneak 1y agoProbably, but my care would have suffered. They are required by law to treat people in emergencies but they aren’t required by law to do anything but keep them from immediately dying. I have a condition that requires complex and ongoing care, and sometimes need to be admitted briefly for same. Refusing to sign consent forms prevents that and gets you on to the “this guy isn’t going to pay us, get him out of here asap” list.
- kstrauser 1y agoYeah, I get how that could be. I wondered if that was something you'd feel comfortable doing in that specific ER, and I could imagine feeling like you had to choose between skipping the form and getting care.
- Izikiel43 1y agoOne more reason yet to have my own modem.
- bix6 1y agoCan anyone recommend a worthwhile setup for me? I am interested in switching my setup on Cox. It seems the Arris S33 plus Unifi Dream Router is one of my best options for good speed and features like ad blocking and VLAN? Best to buy direct from the manufacture or is Amazon ok?
- AzzyHN 1y agoPeople really like the Arris S33 and the motorola... god I think it's the SB8200? something like that.
- divbzero 1y agoLinksys has offered similar functionality (“Linksys Aware”) since 2019. https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/20905223/linksys-aware-mesh-routers-motion-detection-wifi-smart-home https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/20905223/linksys-aware-me...
- slicktux 1y agoI recall years ago reading a research paper on WiFi signals being used to track people through wall using MIMO…then American Express investing in the technology and now this…
- ValveFan6969 1y ago[dead]
- erikerikson 1y agoAbout fivish years ago I interviewed with a Wi-Fi device maker and the engineer I interviewed with was bragging that they could watch users walk around their home.
- bagels 1y agoI have Xfinity as a backup isp. Bye bye!
- sammyo 1y agoNot with the ancient barely working WRT54G that comcast keeps nagging me to replace!
- aschla 1y agoTo whom it may concern, for those who use the modem in bridge mode, it is possible to discreetly pop open the Xfinity modem and disconnect the wireless antennas.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- raxxorraxor 1y agoLooking forward for Wifi singnal scrambling. I mean if we take things like Spectre seriously (I don't to a large degree), this would certainly qualify as well.
- Hilift 1y agoGiven that your ISP is monitoring your DNS, is wifi motion (usage is probably as valuable) really that bad?
- silisili 1y agoXfinity is the worst service I'd ever used. I'm boring. I want a pipe, like a water pipe for data, and I'll do the rest. This makes them actively combative. Ignoring the whole TV/landline stuff they keep pushing as that's too easy a target, they are actively hostile about just using internet. It was way cheaper to use their modem. About $15/mo. Why? Because they want a huge hotspot network in every house. They swear it won't affect speed, but as I never got close to advertised speeds, I didn't believe that. They also act as their 'cell network' that they try to push, and basically call you an idiot for declining. In fairness their cell network is pretty cheap, but I'm just not interested. I chose to pay more to use my own modem, and they absolutely hounded me, stopping just short of calling me stupid about once a month. Maybe it was commissioned sales people searching for people like me as a given, and getting mad when I rebuffed. And let's not even talk about data caps. Which, by the way, using their modem exempted you. Why? I naively assume because they can't differentiate hotspot data from yours. Maybe I'm wrong. The whole service is dystopian. I moved since luckily to a rural, middle of nowhere area that does their own fiber. It has zero of those issues, and costs about half as much for twice the speed. It makes you realize how scummy they really are.
- qwertox 1y agoI treat the ISP-provided gateway as a part of the internet, I don't use its WiFi and don't attach other devices to it which are not my own router or a honeypot. The subnet the gateway resides in is like a moat surrounding a castle.
- alexnewman 1y agoI did this a decade ago. We can detect your breath rate. It's far more sensitive with modern units.
- anonu 1y agoOn one hand, cool. On the other hand, why? This doesn't seem terribly accurate or insightful. A security camera is cheaper and has a better sensor and logic for detecting motion.
- anonu 1y agoCan you block this with a pihole?
- Dowwie 1y agoI worked in a nascent water tech space recently involving an IOT water flow sensing device installed on a main water line. I worked extensively on detection models capable of distinguishing water fixture use during simultaneous usage scenarios. When your full time job involves a niche domain such as this, a whole new world begins to reveal itself. You can distinguish people based on their patterns of fixture usage. You can determine how many people are living in a residence. You can determine hygiene habits of each person. There's a lot more to these smart home devices than what meets the eye. You thought the sensor was good for just detecting leaks and approximately breaking down water consumption? Think again. This device alone is capable of doing a lot, but when combined with other sensing devices such as a WIFI motion detection system, you can create a system where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. First, you may not even need to monitor water flow now because detecting a person in the bathroom, moving about, is sufficient to detect toilet usage followed by hand-wash, and shower usage. You will know duration of each. You may be able to distinguish people in a residence, which means you'll learn who did what throughout a household. Right about now you may be wondering who would ever want to know this kind of stuff? Who cares if you just used the toilet and didn't wash your hands? Who cares if you frequently use the toilet, or wash your hands excessively, or frequently and excessively wash your hands throughout the day? What if you are a landlord with a tenant leasing agreement stipulating no one other than the listed members on the contract shall occupy the residence without permission of the landlord (with exceptions, of course).
- tedd4u 1y agoThanks for sharing this. Check out this other comment on this page to see what one company says they can do (health baselining etc) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44428654 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44428654
- vid 1y agoHow long is it before a starlink has this capability. Maybe a stretch, but also inevitable. I think about the fact that there are probably many uses of starlink that don't involve a consumer login, they just provide ubiquitous surveillance wherever.
- everdrive 1y ago>tape a smartphone to your roomba >stream audiobooks >leave house, commit crime
- fred_is_fred 1y agoUp next - Comcast will pause ads when it detects that you've walked into the kitchen - or raise the volume. Advertisers can pay extra for this feature.
- dvdbloc 1y agoCould I sufficiently foil their mechanism here by not connecting any WiFi devices to their access point and then wrapping their access point with foil? Or would you need to take it all the way and put the device in a faraday cage? I’ve always wanted to build one but never had the motivation. Maybe this will be the impetus I need to finally make one! Like others have stated I use the ISP provided hardware to get around the data cap. But connect nothing to it other than my own router.
- bookofjoe 1y ago>WiFi Motion is off by default
- sleepybrett 1y agoso is this just looking at the SNR for any given connected device and looking for sudden dramatic changes in it?
- thegrim33 1y agoFunny, Xfinity has been spamming me for months now trying to get me to get off my own hardware and onto theirs. Promising me vague "speed improvements" (and of course without ever bothering to provide a single piece of data about how/why speed would be improved, or by how much). No, no I don't think I will.
- stalfosknight 1y agoYet another reason to refuse to rent their modem or router.
- 1970-01-01 1y agoScore one more point for the tinfoil hat crowd: 1. Black tape over our webcams to keep them from watching us. 2. Cardboard over our windows to keep laser microphones from hearing us. 3. RFID blocking wallets to keep our money safe from them. 4. WiFi motion detectors watching our every move in our own home. <---You are here.---> 5. Aluminum underwear keeping our private parts from being scanned into AI at airports. 6. Tinfoil hats protecting our thoughts.