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WiFi routers can see people through walls. Here’s how it works
(www.zmescience.com)
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this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Privacy
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The fact they're able to do this is no surprise to me. The fact they're able to do this on very easily accessible equipment to that degree of accuracy is scary impressive.
While this obviously has huge consequences for privacy, the part that concerns me most is its usage in development of deep fakes. I worry about the consequences of no longer being able to distinguish real video evidence from deliberate manipulation.
Imagine Amazon or Google working out which devices in your home are static, then using them to map out your household with their built in wifi.
Yes I am worried about that too , but what we can do about it? The more I think about this the less I feel the power to do something against surveillance and what it get into my nerve the most is that the big majority of people just dont care that every day we are losing privacy and our freedom. Just look at the UK trying to pass a bill to have backdoor on encrypted communications.
Honestly, I'm not sure. Privacy has always been a spectrum, but we're now living in a world where it's near impossible to get close to 100% privacy for any action from the start. I suspect the current possible remedies are "ensuring the people and organisations which use/abuse surveillance are heavily regulated and compliance heavily enforced" which ironically requires transparency.
Realistically there needs to be lengthy legal procedures to grant authorities and companies use of such techniques. Legislation like that is complicated and slow to develop though. It also risks pinning the core privacy concepts to specific versions of specific tech, which complicates its enforcement over time.
Even if it is very illegal to do this to someone though, there will always be people who use it for whatever purposes. Obviously making it illegal under wiretapping laws without explicit opt-in consent to do it is something that would need to happen. I'd also like to see mandatory source attribution laws.
That won't stop everyone though. Which means we maybe need to start looking into comstruction legislation to ensure RF blocking materials are used in external wall construction. If that is an effective remedy to Van Eck phreaking at all. I have no idea what resolution information can be determined from devices that aren't purpose built broadcasting and receiving devices.
And all of that requires good-will and sensible decisions from the existing legal systems and legislators. Which can't be completely achieved, and in many cases is... currently very poor.
Tl;dr A very hard problem which will need work from a bunch of different parts of society and likely cannot be completely solved for all people. The only solution for this specific technique right now I think is to go fully off-grid with no electricity. Even then though you'll still have satellites and drones to intrude.
I guess you could design every room as its own faraday cage with separate access points against this specific threat.