Unless we get legislation passed that bans this use in public and private spaces prepare for this to be combined with Flock et al to track your movements inside your house (already is being tested by some internet providers), track the moment you exit your house, track you along your route, track you inside all the business you visit.
Unless we do something, this will be used to covertly break the fourth amendment.
> already is being tested by some internet providers
I would say to never use a wireless router given to you by your ISP, and to install Openwrt on the one you do lose, but the government is absolutely chomping at the bit to ban all wireless routers whose firmware can be changed and to force you to use their (soon to be if not already backdoored) ones.
It’s invasive enough that we will need to do something about it, even if perfect enforcement is not possible. 6G wireless already plans to include these features as well. The business model needs to be made unviable or illegal somehow, perhaps under anti-stalking grounds.
Individuals may use this tech themselves, and businesses may use it on their own premises, which seems fine—the problem is with large scale deployments.
That’s for the government, on fourth amendment grounds. But I also don’t want private companies doing this on a wide scale even for non-governmental use.
I came from the era before WiFi. One doesn't HAVE to have WiFi. Everybody keeps thinking they do. Same thing with cell phones. The world existed before all that, and it can exist just fine again without it.
Can't wait to see clothes with some thin metal wires knitted with the fabric acting like a Faraday cage or disturbing the signal enough to blur the results
I'm personally bearish on privacy. As the cost of surveillance comes down we will see more and more actors able to conduct surveillance until even bored kids with pocket money and an afternoon can do it. Denying the """good""" guys the capabilities that all the bad guys have will be an absurdity.
Never do anything that any group of people (or disturbed individual) might take issue with. Never accidentally date or marry an abuser. Never contest the absolute authority of whoever is in power. Simple enough, right?
By creating a culture of live and let live. Maybe giving some activities legal protections that didn't use to need them in the past. Non-discrimination rules related to them. And being more careful than ever to not let a government be elected that would abuse all the information it now has on its citizenry. More democratic safeguards.
Heart rate, no, but monitoring breathing is possible using mmWave radar(eg 60 GHz Doppler radar nowadays, or the 5.8 GHz band earlier). Resmed S+ was probably the most well known, but it's been discontinued for a while now. If you search around, you can still find such devices.
Yes actually, but I don't think it's technically allowed/legal in the US in the eyes of the FCC, not sure about other countries. It utilizes 77GHz FMCW, I got one for free but they retail for about $100. The part number is R77ABH1
Edit: sorry, you said "using this technology" and I missed that - this doesn't uses the same tech
> "By observing the propagation of radio waves, we can create an image of the surroundings and of persons who are present,"
Notice that it doesn't matter if you are using Wifi. If you're in a city, I doubt there are many places that lack Wifi radio waves.
Thank you to the researchers (seriously) for revealing this to the public rather than selling it to the highest bidder. Though I suspect that, given how obvious it is once you think about it - all these radio waves solve many problems of passive imaging - it's already known to some people.
> These signals, known as beamforming feedback information (BFI), are transmitted without encryption, meaning that anyone within range can potentially read them.
> By analyzing that information, the system can generate images of people from multiple viewpoints. Those images can then be used to determine a person's identity.
This is the extent of the description of the magic sauce. Why are those images so unique that you can’t trick the algorithm? I can’t think of any EM based identification that can’t be tricked by adding layers of reflectors or absorbers in various points - a mask, special paint, etc.
Unless we get legislation passed that bans this use in public and private spaces prepare for this to be combined with Flock et al to track your movements inside your house (already is being tested by some internet providers), track the moment you exit your house, track you along your route, track you inside all the business you visit.
Unless we do something, this will be used to covertly break the fourth amendment.
> already is being tested by some internet providers
I would say to never use a wireless router given to you by your ISP, and to install Openwrt on the one you do lose, but the government is absolutely chomping at the bit to ban all wireless routers whose firmware can be changed and to force you to use their (soon to be if not already backdoored) ones.
This would be extremely difficult to detect and enforce.
It’s invasive enough that we will need to do something about it, even if perfect enforcement is not possible. 6G wireless already plans to include these features as well. The business model needs to be made unviable or illegal somehow, perhaps under anti-stalking grounds.
Individuals may use this tech themselves, and businesses may use it on their own premises, which seems fine—the problem is with large scale deployments.
The Supreme court recently already ruled against warrantless mass surveillance along the lines you describe:
https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-applauds-important-...
What we need now is laws that turn this ruling into action and policy.
That’s for the government, on fourth amendment grounds. But I also don’t want private companies doing this on a wide scale even for non-governmental use.
The spirit of a hacker is not to ask whether it is hard, but whether it is valuable.
I find protecting civil liberties valuable.
I came from the era before WiFi. One doesn't HAVE to have WiFi. Everybody keeps thinking they do. Same thing with cell phones. The world existed before all that, and it can exist just fine again without it.
Can't wait to see clothes with some thin metal wires knitted with the fabric acting like a Faraday cage or disturbing the signal enough to blur the results
The musician MIA has a line of clothes along those lines:
https://ohmni.com
Good time to invest in companies that make (extremely expensive) RF shielding paint and fine wire mesh.
Paper: https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000185756/16810098...
How do I wire this to Home Assistant?
Using this: https://github.com/francescopace/espectre
I'm personally bearish on privacy. As the cost of surveillance comes down we will see more and more actors able to conduct surveillance until even bored kids with pocket money and an afternoon can do it. Denying the """good""" guys the capabilities that all the bad guys have will be an absurdity.
We will simply have to adapt to it.
The convenient accelerationist take that lets you do whatever you want, all the time.
How do we adapt?
Never do anything that any group of people (or disturbed individual) might take issue with. Never accidentally date or marry an abuser. Never contest the absolute authority of whoever is in power. Simple enough, right?
By creating a culture of live and let live. Maybe giving some activities legal protections that didn't use to need them in the past. Non-discrimination rules related to them. And being more careful than ever to not let a government be elected that would abuse all the information it now has on its citizenry. More democratic safeguards.
For those seeking the source:
> The researchers presented their results at the "ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security" (CCS) in Taipei.
This citation at the bottom might be the paper:
Julian Todt, Felix Morsbach, Thorsten Strufe. BFId: Identity Inference Attacks Utilizing Beamforming Feedback Information. , DOI: 10.1145/3719027.3765062
Looks like it's open access:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3719027.3765062
Are there any projects or products today available for monitoring heart rate and respiration without needing a smart watch using this technology?
Heart rate, no, but monitoring breathing is possible using mmWave radar(eg 60 GHz Doppler radar nowadays, or the 5.8 GHz band earlier). Resmed S+ was probably the most well known, but it's been discontinued for a while now. If you search around, you can still find such devices.
Yes actually, but I don't think it's technically allowed/legal in the US in the eyes of the FCC, not sure about other countries. It utilizes 77GHz FMCW, I got one for free but they retail for about $100. The part number is R77ABH1
Edit: sorry, you said "using this technology" and I missed that - this doesn't uses the same tech
No worries, I presume it’s only a matter of time with consumer grade wifi and machine learning.
No
> "By observing the propagation of radio waves, we can create an image of the surroundings and of persons who are present,"
Notice that it doesn't matter if you are using Wifi. If you're in a city, I doubt there are many places that lack Wifi radio waves.
Thank you to the researchers (seriously) for revealing this to the public rather than selling it to the highest bidder. Though I suspect that, given how obvious it is once you think about it - all these radio waves solve many problems of passive imaging - it's already known to some people.
Wifi imaging has been a publicly known technique for years. I think the news is more how good it's gotten.
> These signals, known as beamforming feedback information (BFI), are transmitted without encryption, meaning that anyone within range can potentially read them.
> By analyzing that information, the system can generate images of people from multiple viewpoints. Those images can then be used to determine a person's identity.
This is the extent of the description of the magic sauce. Why are those images so unique that you can’t trick the algorithm? I can’t think of any EM based identification that can’t be tricked by adding layers of reflectors or absorbers in various points - a mask, special paint, etc.