Ordinary WiFi could become a powerful new form of invisible surveillance. Using standard wireless signals and artificial intelligence - researchers demonstrated a system capable of identifying people. (www.sciencedaily.com)

submitted 3 days ago by InevitableSwing@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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[-] kristina@hexbear.net 40 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

jesus, 100% accuracy over 197 people? basically the only way to be a private person then would be to live in the woods with no internet

i assume it works similar to an airport scanner if it isnt gait analysis, it measures your actual body. excited to have the anti-trans wifi alarm go off when you try to enter the correct bathroom. also incredibly hard to do crime, maybe there is some sort of way to obfuscate your body to make it look like you have large hips (drag gear!) but wont be detected as clothing

[-] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 23 points 2 days ago

[-] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 16 points 2 days ago

Maybe glueing aluminium foil to the clothing to spice up reflections can help.

[-] DogThatWentGorp@hexbear.net 36 points 2 days ago

The end stage of leftist conspiracy theories vs libertarian ones again rears its head:

"You're wearing tinfoil because you believe mole people are trying to microwave your semen with 5g. I'm wearing tinfoil because a public study released showing wifi can be used like sonar and it's literally not even a secret they just published the papers you can read it on a normal website. We're not the same."

[-] tocopherol@hexbear.net 18 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

In 2020 my mom lived in a place where most people didn't mask, she said "If anyone gives me shit I'll say I'm doing it to block the government facial scanning technology." It's interesting that it's a legitimate reason to wear a mask all the time these days.

[-] Collatz_problem@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago

Even better if you print a face on the mask.

[-] Salah@hexbear.net 12 points 2 days ago

😭

[-] kristina@hexbear.net 6 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

probably dont even need it on the outside just do it around your torso under clothes or something, could probably sew it into a mask as well. theres likely a way to do this comfortably, sew it into a second shirt or something

[-] electric_nan@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago

Even if you don't have WiFi, this could easily be paired with a transmitter (WiFi router/AP). You'd need to make your dwelling into a faraday cage.

[-] Kynsey@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Nah, these newer wifi standards aren't all that good at going through walls. That's why they can be used to track people because they bounce off you. A thick wall will block most of the signal. No need for a faraday cage.

[-] came_apart_at_Kmart@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago

just live in the woods with only wired internet. Cat6Gang stay winning.

[-] Kynsey@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago

As far as I know the newer Wifi 6 and 7 standards are way better for this so just keeping your old router would make things a lot fuzzier. Also generally the ones that are the best at this radar stuff are also the ones that have trouble going through walls. Plus in public you don't have privacy anyway with cameras everywhere.

Also since this is examining how radio waves bounce around you could literally just add noise to it. Place decorations around the house that make radio waves bounce like crazy. Coat your ceiling fan in radio reflective material for example.

[-] LeeeroooyJeeenkiiins@hexbear.net 31 points 2 days ago

At some point we just need to say "that's cool and all but you're not allowed to work on this anymore"

[-] DasRav@hexbear.net 26 points 2 days ago

So many ethical and good uses of AI being discovered. It's really such a mystery why many people hate it.

[-] Hohsia@hexbear.net 10 points 2 days ago

It’s that old pesky human condition (TM) you see!

[-] KnilAdlez@hexbear.net 25 points 2 days ago

Yeah, I've seen very similar tech advertised as a feature (detecting room occupancy) on routers.

[-] EndlessNightmare@reddthat.com 11 points 2 days ago

Some ISPs offer it as a service. I think they market it as part of their home security packages.

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 15 points 2 days ago

Man. I can think of so many good ways to use this but it's only going to be used for evil.

[-] Maeve@kbin.earth 23 points 2 days ago

I'd bet the police apparatchik it's been happening for a decade.

[-] MolotovHalfEmpty@hexbear.net 17 points 2 days ago

It definitely has. The retail industry has been using a version of it for at least four years that I know of.

[-] 7bicycles@hexbear.net 8 points 2 days ago

You'd probably be correct, the basic premise has been around since 2013

https://news.mit.edu/2013/new-system-uses-low-power-wi-fi-signal-to-track-moving-humans-0628

[-] Poutine@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

Was the premise not shown in 2008 film The Dark Knight ?

[-] deforestgump@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

Me and the boys at the LAN party with no interruptions

[-] vanDerVaartBlackenedRanch@hexbear.net 7 points 2 days ago

Kilowatt RTX 5090s would make the smell so much worse in a modern re-enactment.

[-] Fossifoo@hexbear.net 3 points 2 days ago

The power requirements would be through the roof. Wonder how well Dreamhack does. 10k PSUs at a kW is 10MW. 😬

[-] himeneko@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

i knew a guy at work that worked on this but with ultrasound coming out of a cheap speaker. it scared me.

[-] Hohsia@hexbear.net 14 points 2 days ago

Seriously when is anarchy ushered in because I’m tired of this shit

[-] GoodBleanis@hexbear.net 11 points 2 days ago

Anti-wifi Fresnel lens clothing company entrepreneurship opportunity

[-] hotspur@hexbear.net 11 points 2 days ago

There a couple open source repositories out there for setting something like this up, or at least the basic sensing. I started looking at it a bit but then got bored and didn’t try it out. You can set it up on a computer in your home (was gonna use a spare desktop I run Linux on), and the package had the ability to start to correlate movement skeletons as unique based on repeated motions. It freaked me out that it was theoretically possible to invasively spy on my neighbors on either side just by downloading some open source software… anyway I never went through trying to get it installed or working and it probably would have been a finicky setup, but the potentials for crazy surveillance are pretty huge with the wifi sensing, and outside of living in faraday cages not sure how much you could prevent it.

[-] GoodBleanis@hexbear.net 9 points 2 days ago

Diy Faraday cage youtube celebs were right

[-] hotspur@hexbear.net 11 points 2 days ago

Say 5 years ago I would have said: that’s nuts. But more and more these days I’m thinking, yeah having a house with some signal blocking might not be such a bad idea… not really feasible for most people, but you could integrate somewhat in new construction, and certainly you coild foil a room and use EM paint… but would be pretty weird.

Case anyone’s interested, couple of resources on SCIF wall construction:

https://www.cooperbuilds.com/post/scif-sapf-wall-types-understanding-icd-705-minimum-requirements-and-applications

https://signalsdefense.com/rfoil-frequently-asked-questions/

[-] Awoo@hexbear.net 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

it was theoretically possible to invasively spy on my neighbors on either side just by downloading some open source software

With the information it constructs and AI technology you could feed a photo of the neighbour into the AI and have it turn that information into real 3d environment with a real 3d model of the neighbour that actually looks like them.