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.
The only thing I think we can do is shield our private spaces from prying signals like we use walls to shield them from prying eyes.
We wouldn't have street lights if the Fourth Amendment could prevent the monitoring of people in public. If I can install a webcam pointed at an intersection and stream it publicly, anyone and everyone can, and eventually enough public webcams like that create a network that anyone can use to track what's going in public. The only thing we can really do is ensure knowledge of what people do in public is kept public.
Flock extracts value from public information and there's nothing Flock can do to prevent competition. Flock is only a problem for the moment because they have a relative monopoly on public information and can make claims or provide evidence nobody can contest, but eventually we're going to decide we shouldn't trust a private entity like Flock to accurately report reality any more than we should trust anyone else with a private agenda.
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.
It's also for government warrants on 4th Amendment grounds. It does not cover the government simply purchasing (or asking nicely for) the information from a willing Google, perhaps also in exchange for the Justice Department settling an antitrust action, or for an unrelated lucrative contract.
Every "progressive" actually called you an extreme right-winger for suggesting that that was a problem in the government meeting weekly with every social media company making suggestions about who and what speech to ban. The brownshirts are already well-practiced. There is no one on the constitution's side, including the ACLU.
> In 2026, the Supreme Court limited the application of the doctrine to digital location data as well. Chatrie v. United States held that law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it compels Google to provide a user's historical location information, even though the data is held by a third-party techonology company.
There have been virtually no restraints on the Executive Branch for nearly 25 years now. The way we elect Congresspeople now exclusively produces ones who have no interest in the risks that come from actual governance, and exclusively act on the interests of their sponsors.
SCOTUS has ruled that tipping politicians is legal. Literally, not hyperbolically. Even if the Supreme Court couldn't be bribed like that (although they are eagerly and constantly bribed like that) because they don't have a fear of losing their jobs, Congress is the only court that can try a president for going against court judgements. Doesn't exist anymore.
> 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 use, 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.
I recommend not using wireless at all. Having a good wired home LAN removes a lot of headaches, especially if you like to experiment with alternative OSes.
Also, if you have a home NVR then wired cameras are definitely the way to go. Wireless cameras are susceptible to jamming and/or deauth attacks.
I recently upgraded my home network to 10Gbps. As it was when it was only 1Gbps, everything that could be using a wired connection is using one. The WAPs (now R770s) are used to provide Internet for mobile devices, and a few other IoT devices that don't have a physical Ethernet port.
WAPs are independent of routers, but many low-end consumer routers provide integrated WiFi, which can usually be turned off if desired.
Most WAPs provide a means to set the TX power levels, and some newer ones will automatically negotiate with the client(s) to use the minimum required power to close the link (just as cellular phones do).
"... 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."
Any references to support these claims
The last computer I purchased, before the memory crunch, has no wireless card
I deliberately omitted it
I use this computer as a router among other purposes
Many computers work well as routers
A ban on wireless would be acceptable to me
Convenience and aesthetics aside, wireless sucks compared to wired
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.
I disagree. I think if you've come from the time before WiFi, with enough time before it to remember and have nostalgia for it, then you've already made your nut and are simply spending the time you have left in the relative carelessness of the upper middle class and that skews your perspective
> disagree. I think if you've come from the time before WiFi, with enough time before it to remember and have nostalgia for it, then you've already made your nut and are simply spending the time you have left in the relative carelessness of the upper middle class and that skews your perspective
"My nut" if you want to call that, was usurped by a lot of technocrats and now snot-nosed little brats that think they know what they are up against. However, you are free to think what you like.
I agree with your take. There's a lot of things we don't have to have that provide us a lot of value, so we have them anyway.
Sliced bread (commercially available after the automobile!) comes to mind, as do antibiotics--which also have some negative consequences to go along with the benefits.
Well if every business and home and public place has WiFi or Cellular technology with these capabilities it doesn’t really matter if you don’t they will still be able to use it to track you. This is why something has to be done to stop it.
Radio transmission of data is over 100 years old we aren’t turning the dial back on that, but this one specific application of it to track people is and that’s the problem.
I learned about RECCO tags recently, which are RFID tags designed for finding people in avalanches. I wonder if the return signal contains any information or is fingerprintable?
I think it's annoying that this gets repeated without revealing the actual stats: this is for the BFI test, it's 99.5% ± 0.38, where 40 samples per person were split 80-20 in training and testset.
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
> "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.
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
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.
No it can't. I'm sorry but this article is quite sensationalist and is twisting their words around.
What we can do is identify that a person-like object exists in a room, not necessarily Sally Jones from 123 Main St, as they try to imply by saying they are "able to infer people's identities with almost 100% accuracy."
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?
Don't ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been, ever, for any reason whatsoever.
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.
> 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.
Sadly, it’s too late. It’s quite clear we’re on track to a totalitarian surveillance state.
Ring cameras recording your movements around the neighborhood.
Flock (and other government) cameras recording all vehicle movements.
Cell towers and WiFi APs recording device ids and movements.
Recent legislation requiring driver monitoring systems in cars. Plus the fact that any EV can be remotely controlled and disabled.
And now we have AI systems that can actually aggregate and correlate all this data.
It’s over. We’re too far down this slippery slope, there’s no turning back now.
> It’s over. We’re too far down this slippery slope, there’s no turning back now.
Not with that attitude.
This mentality is exactly how we got here. Thanks
> This mentality is exactly how we got here.
That's why it continues to be peddled.
The only thing I think we can do is shield our private spaces from prying signals like we use walls to shield them from prying eyes.
We wouldn't have street lights if the Fourth Amendment could prevent the monitoring of people in public. If I can install a webcam pointed at an intersection and stream it publicly, anyone and everyone can, and eventually enough public webcams like that create a network that anyone can use to track what's going in public. The only thing we can really do is ensure knowledge of what people do in public is kept public.
Flock extracts value from public information and there's nothing Flock can do to prevent competition. Flock is only a problem for the moment because they have a relative monopoly on public information and can make claims or provide evidence nobody can contest, but eventually we're going to decide we shouldn't trust a private entity like Flock to accurately report reality any more than we should trust anyone else with a private agenda.
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.
It's also for government warrants on 4th Amendment grounds. It does not cover the government simply purchasing (or asking nicely for) the information from a willing Google, perhaps also in exchange for the Justice Department settling an antitrust action, or for an unrelated lucrative contract.
Every "progressive" actually called you an extreme right-winger for suggesting that that was a problem in the government meeting weekly with every social media company making suggestions about who and what speech to ban. The brownshirts are already well-practiced. There is no one on the constitution's side, including the ACLU.
> It does not cover the government simply purchasing (or asking nicely for) the information from a willing Google
This is not entirely accurate anymore: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
> In 2026, the Supreme Court limited the application of the doctrine to digital location data as well. Chatrie v. United States held that law enforcement conducts a Fourth Amendment search when it compels Google to provide a user's historical location information, even though the data is held by a third-party techonology company.
There have been virtually no restraints on the Executive Branch for nearly 25 years now. The way we elect Congresspeople now exclusively produces ones who have no interest in the risks that come from actual governance, and exclusively act on the interests of their sponsors.
SCOTUS has ruled that tipping politicians is legal. Literally, not hyperbolically. Even if the Supreme Court couldn't be bribed like that (although they are eagerly and constantly bribed like that) because they don't have a fear of losing their jobs, Congress is the only court that can try a president for going against court judgements. Doesn't exist anymore.
The spirit of a hacker is not to ask whether it is hard, but whether it is valuable.
I find protecting civil liberties valuable.
> 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 use, 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.
I recommend not using wireless at all. Having a good wired home LAN removes a lot of headaches, especially if you like to experiment with alternative OSes.
Also, if you have a home NVR then wired cameras are definitely the way to go. Wireless cameras are susceptible to jamming and/or deauth attacks.
Not a solution for many people, especially mobile/tablet devices.
I recently upgraded my home network to 10Gbps. As it was when it was only 1Gbps, everything that could be using a wired connection is using one. The WAPs (now R770s) are used to provide Internet for mobile devices, and a few other IoT devices that don't have a physical Ethernet port.
WAPs are independent of routers, but many low-end consumer routers provide integrated WiFi, which can usually be turned off if desired.
Most WAPs provide a means to set the TX power levels, and some newer ones will automatically negotiate with the client(s) to use the minimum required power to close the link (just as cellular phones do).
"... 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."
Any references to support these claims
The last computer I purchased, before the memory crunch, has no wireless card
I deliberately omitted it
I use this computer as a router among other purposes
Many computers work well as routers
A ban on wireless would be acceptable to me
Convenience and aesthetics aside, wireless sucks compared to wired
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.
I disagree. I think if you've come from the time before WiFi, with enough time before it to remember and have nostalgia for it, then you've already made your nut and are simply spending the time you have left in the relative carelessness of the upper middle class and that skews your perspective
> disagree. I think if you've come from the time before WiFi, with enough time before it to remember and have nostalgia for it, then you've already made your nut and are simply spending the time you have left in the relative carelessness of the upper middle class and that skews your perspective
"My nut" if you want to call that, was usurped by a lot of technocrats and now snot-nosed little brats that think they know what they are up against. However, you are free to think what you like.
I agree with your take. There's a lot of things we don't have to have that provide us a lot of value, so we have them anyway.
Sliced bread (commercially available after the automobile!) comes to mind, as do antibiotics--which also have some negative consequences to go along with the benefits.
>Sliced bread (commercially available after the automobile!) comes to mind, as do antibiotics-
The fact you think these things are equal to WiFi probably means you are in a generation that has always been connected.
"Exist" is a low benchmark to hit.
Very few people would be willing to trade in the opulence of today.
It wasn't that before was "less opulent". In many ways, it was "more opulent".
You don't have to have washing machine either but it is kind of pain to wash in your hand. Same like it is a pain to connect your phone to Ethernet
Well if every business and home and public place has WiFi or Cellular technology with these capabilities it doesn’t really matter if you don’t they will still be able to use it to track you. This is why something has to be done to stop it.
Radio transmission of data is over 100 years old we aren’t turning the dial back on that, but this one specific application of it to track people is and that’s the problem.
EMF can turn it back in about 20 seconds.
"EMF" is electromagnetic frequency, which is the general topic under discussion. Perhaps in context, you are referring to "EMP" instead?
A pulse is a specific frequency of EMF.
Worth noting the existence of IEEE 802.11bf:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiFi_Sensing
I learned about RECCO tags recently, which are RFID tags designed for finding people in avalanches. I wonder if the return signal contains any information or is fingerprintable?
https://recco.com/technology/
> almost 100% accuracy
I think it's annoying that this gets repeated without revealing the actual stats: this is for the BFI test, it's 99.5% ± 0.38, where 40 samples per person were split 80-20 in training and testset.
paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/3719027.3765062
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
What a time, conspiracy theorists being accidentally correct and their tools become somewhat useful. Does this count as a Torment Nexus story ???
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...
> "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.
How do I wire this to Home Assistant?
Using this: https://github.com/francescopace/espectre
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?
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.
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.
No
No it can't. I'm sorry but this article is quite sensationalist and is twisting their words around.
What we can do is identify that a person-like object exists in a room, not necessarily Sally Jones from 123 Main St, as they try to imply by saying they are "able to infer people's identities with almost 100% accuracy."
What they're claiming is science fiction.
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?
Reminds me of that Michael Scott quote:
Don't ever, for any reason, do anything, to anyone, for any reason, ever, no matter what, no matter where, or who, or who you are with, or where you are going, or where you've been, ever, for any reason whatsoever.
"Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."
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.
Do you really trust that last part?
Not sure if it will work or not, but I think it's our best shot.
> 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.
Wifi and cellular signals are how the military hunts and kills terrorists.
Sounds like the perfect AdTech! /s