Submitted 3 weeks ago by bignose@programming.dev to technology@lemmy.world
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The Sapienza computer scientists say Wi-Fi signals offer superior surveillance potential compared to cameras because they’re not affected by light conditions, can penetrate walls and other obstacles, and they’re more privacy-preserving than visual images.
[…] The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture.
That’s a very unique fingerprint he’s got.
“Hey boss come look. This microwave is walking around again”
I’m generally pro research, but occasionally I come across a body of research and wish I could just shut down what they’re doing and rewind the clock to before that started.
There is no benefit of this for the common person. There is no end user need or product for being able to identify individuals based on their interactions with WiFi signals. The only people that benefit from this are large corporations and governments and that’s from them turning it on you.
Continued research will ease widespread surveillance and mass tracking. That’s not a good thing.
It is cool for home automation if you can turn it into a presence detection software (do not connect your Homeassistant to the internet though)
If all you need is presence detection then a motion sensor would be vastly more efficient.
If you actually need identity detection, then maybe, but you’ll still have to have a camera or detailed access logs to associate the interference signature with a known entity and at that point you may as well just put an RFID reader under the bowl you throw your keys into or use facial or gait detection.
Well it could be pretty handy for home automation.
I wish this was the goal, instead of large corpos doing large corpos things
There is no end user need or product for being able to identify individuals based on their interactions with WiFi signals
Cat tracker
Why do you need to identify specific cats over merely the presence of movement or cats in general?
Put an airtag on the collar. Done.
First - someone comes up with this. Next, privacy researchers and black/white/grey hat techies come up with methods to defeat it.
Better for surveillance tech research like this to be published out in the open than developed in some secret lab. I figure these researchers are doing more positive than negative by publishing their findings. It’s not like if they didn’t publish, someone else wouldn’t come up with this and possibly use it clandestinely.
Could be developed into a useful tool for search and rescue
Probably not.
This kind of thing relies on the fact that the emitter and environments are static, impacting the propagation of the signals in a predictable way and that each person, having a unique physique, consistently interferes with that propagation in the same way. It’s a tool that reports “the interference in this room looks like the same interference observed in these past cases.”
Search and rescue is a very dynamic environment, with no opportunity to establish a local baseline, and with a high likelihood that the physiological signal you are looking for has been altered (such as by broken or severed limbs).
There are some other WiFi sniffing technologies that might be more useful for S&R such as movement detection, but I’m not sure if that will work as well when the broadcaster is outside the environment (as the more rubble between the emitter and the target the weaker your signal from reflections against the rubble).
Don’t think of this as being able to see through walls like with a futuristic camera, think of this as AI assisted anomaly detection in signal processing (which is exactly what the researchers are doing).
Being able to scan and model a 3D environment using wifi? Sure. Wifi-fingerprinting the people in the scan? Why?
You are correct because something similar has already been used
…nasa.gov/FINDER-Finds-Its-Way-into-Rescuers-Tool…
Microwaves are the same as wifi waves, these are able to detect bodies and whether the bodies are beating or not
Great, another dystopian way for authorities to observe me on the shitter
Your poo time has expired and your pay is docked. Flushing will cost 50 dollars for the next week. Get back to work
You get poo time? That’s socialism!
Please drink a verification laxative?
Strange. Shitting on your bosses desk is still free. Hmm. Interesting loophole.
Why would someone research something like this? God damn, like use your life for good, homie
Well I heard about this and thought “this will be great for home automation”, but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.
If it’s your home why can’t you just have a camera or motion sensor. Rather than trying to adapt something that isn’t designed for the purpose.
I can imagine this being initially an accidental discovery like oh every time so and so’s body interacts with the WiFi signal it’s the same pattern… until someone starts exploring this further… and then some engineer or their manager started looking for applications for this. In my experience engineering researchers especially are very good with coming up with use cases for whatever tech they’re working with, with little ethical consideration.
I doubt it. You’d need to be looking really closely at the waveforms to notice this, so they were likely already doing something similar, like that research that can pinpoint where people are in a house based on their WiFi. They were probably already doing something creepy before they noticed that this was more straightforward than they expected.
Everything is incremental progress in some way.
I remember years back someone doing experiments with Wi-Fi to see if a room was occupied based on signal attenuation.
This just looks like an extension of that.
Not everything is a giant leap
You think if people who publish their work publicly didn’t research things like this, they would just never be discovered?
At least this way, we all know about the possibility, and further research can be done to see what can mitigate it.
I’ve seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don’t remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone’s EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we’re not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
You had non work related thoughts on three separate occasions last week. Please report to HR for attitude adjustment.
Time for tin foil hats
accurate matches up to 95.5% of the time
and they’re more privacy-preserving than visual images
Uh-huh.
My thought exactly. Their definition of privacy is… interesting
When anyone or anything says that their product works “up to x%” I always presume it doesn’t really work at all.
Christ, 1% is included in that “up to 95.5%” vague bullshit statement.
I hate it when commercials say "up to 100%. It’s literally a pointless metric; that could mean anything from 0% to 100%, inclusive.
I believe the reason they had to say “up to” is because the “signatute” will vary day to day ever so slightly (natural weight fluctuation), and if you gain or lose weight it can change dramatically, so the AI would have to constantly consider that and adjust it’s records.
Honestly, unpopular opinion, but as long as it isn’t very short wavelength RF and they allow for self-hosted/open-source alternatives, I do find it a bit more privacy respecting than cameras, of course they have to say they are using the technology in public places.
It also has it’s ways of fooling it, instead of wearing a wig and a false nose, you could wear a carbon-infused silicone fat suit to change the way you interact with RF.
Sounds like an ad tailored specifically to putin
Incorrect bio-signature detected, drink verification can to continue your content.
Legendary reference
they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.
hhhhwat. How can they identify you and also be privacy preserving? 🤔
It’s all AI. You should not worry about it. In fact you should not think about it. All is going to be fine.
This is fine.
Well, the alternative would be a camera in every toilet stall. See how our benevolent corporate overlords only have our best interest in mind?
They know you are a person and they can call your a certain UUID, but there will be a hard time matching you to your name etc.
Camera’s can do face recognition (if your face is even in the database) to know who you are.
This only works until the point where they have your form in a database which they can check…
We have heard this non-sense before, only to find it's trivially easy to connect to your PID.
I’d imagine it’s like online advertisers: they convert your fingerprint to a token to try to sell you shit, but they allegedly don’t know who exactly you are or where you go. So visiting animatedllamaporn.com is still your little secret…
Neat. Good luck protecting yourself from this.
On the other hand, I’m seriously considering opening an Etsy shop selling foil-lined clothes. I’m pretty good at sewing. What do you think?
Then I’ll look for the person with the fingerprint of foil-lined clothes
Not if everyone buys it, because then we’d all look the same
You’d need fabric with continuous metallic threads that form a complete mesh to actually block the 2.4/5GHz signals - most DIY foil approaches leave gaps that WiFi can still penetrate thru.
I feel like you’re overthinking this. These are people who buy crystal-infused drinking cups to reset their personal feng shui. (Spoiler: it’s just glitter.)
I really wish I didn’t have morals. It’s so easy to make money if you’re willing to fleece people.
I think you will be the one guy in the crowd wearing foil-lined clothes.
you can also take a picture of a person with a camera that senses light beams
The lack of awareness of the most primitive of physics concepts, the transmission/absorption/reflection of energy, is completely unknown to most people.
This shits already used by xfinity
95.5% accuracy is abysmal for any use case these people want to use it for
Someone’s going to use this to drop missiles on “baddies” with their sleeping families in 3 2 1
I was having a nice day :(
You know, this, and the using wifi to see through walls stuff to me just immediately seemed to fall into “don’t research this, it can only be used for evil”.
I don’t get why we bother studying these types of things.
So, you’re saying the tin foil hat people were right all along?!
Reminds me of the Christian Bale batman movie where he could spy on everywhere from the bat cave. Seemed so far fetched it almost ruined the movie
Wait… so the guys with tinfoil hats were on to something?
Time to start making faraday clothes.
Let me know when I can selfhost LibreFi Security on my router and use it for myself. Sounds great for private home use.
Well of course the Sapienza scientists would figure this out, Agent 47 keeps killing everyone in the labs
And this here folks is the true ending. No one there is going to stop it as always.
Congratulations! You are now fully fucked!
There is the draft dodger, he is located in building #52556 in this city, info updated 125 milliseconds ago. He left his phone at his house 5 states away, go get him.
Stilsuits: get it for the unbearable heat as we turn the Earth into a desert, now with wifi blocking!
The resulting image must just basically look like a shadow, I can’t imagine that they’re going to get much internal detail with Wi-Fi considering that my router’s signal practically gets blocked by a piece of cardboard.
This research essentially amounts to, humans can be individually identified with nothing more than low quality x-rays. Well yeah, so what, you can also use visible light and in any situation where you’re going to use Wi-Fi to detect someone, it’s got to be easier to buy a cheap CCTV camera.
This has me wondering how my sack of potatoes body would look 🤣
Time to carry a WiFi jammer
Can I become obese in a day to avoid being fingerprinted?
Cool
besselj@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
Ironically, a tin foil hat would probably work to prevent that kind of surveillance
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 weeks ago
A faraday hat.
hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 3 weeks ago
wouldn’t that make it wors? basically any signal can bounce off you, making yourself even easier to track.
besselj@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
The tracking happens even with a big reflector/scatterer on your head, but as long as you dont wear it regularly, the system would have difficulty identifying you from wave propagation alone
Capricorn_Geriatric@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Since it ‘figerprints’ you, changing your fingerprint by blocking parts of the signal with pieces of foil doesn’t seem like a terrible idea.
Now, the question is: is such a tactic like wearing gloves, or like using super glue?