[HN Gopher] A single laser fired through a keyhole can expose ev...
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A single laser fired through a keyhole can expose everything inside
a room
Author : anigbrowl
Score : 354 points
Date : 2021-09-09 05:52 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (gizmodo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (gizmodo.com)
| crispyambulance wrote:
| TLDR; what the images look like:
| https://youtu.be/Veo27qhrI20?t=193
| fillipvt wrote:
| Would this be helpful in any way for fall detection? Especially
| for the elderly. I wouldn't want a camera watching my parents for
| example.
|
| I think so, if it can track acceleration it may be able to do so.
| Would have to play around with it to know for sure.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| There are fall sensors the elderly can wear, they often have a
| bonus panic button too.
|
| In answer to your question: This isn't useful for anything yet
| as it is early academic research that mostly just proves it is
| possible, it would have to be refined and minimized to become
| commercially useful.
|
| That being said I cannot imagine this being more accurate or
| cheaper than optical sensors + computer vision, privacy issues
| can be mitigated by building a closed-look with no outside
| connection. The point of this laser technique is for situations
| where you cannot/don't want to have direct vision of the
| location (e.g. inside the body, inside a room, etc).
| jdthedisciple wrote:
| Very interesting and also impressive. Intuitively, one might at
| first think that "seeing inside a closed room" implies
| "...without being seen yourself", however that is obviously not
| the case, since occupants of a room will hardly miss a giant beam
| of laser.
|
| But then again that's not the point of this technique, and I can
| well imagine it being useful in rescue scenarios and such.
| MontagFTB wrote:
| Would the technique not work with a laser outside the visible
| spectrum?
| _Microft wrote:
| I expect this would work with infrared lasers as well.
| consumer451 wrote:
| In which case a standard radar/laser detector made for cars
| would alert you, correct? [0]
|
| Tangentially, I always loved the story of the US Navy using
| consumer automotive radar detectors in fighter jets. [1]
|
| [0] https://copradar.com/chapts/chapt5/ch5d1.html
|
| [1]
| https://apnews.com/article/ff8979c9f5b1b9eb0561a97a6a0af387
| _Microft wrote:
| Laser detectors might be hard to find in living rooms but
| you could accidently detect it with the selfie camera of
| your smartphone. At least in the past, manufacturers
| cheaped out on this one and omitted the IR filter on it.
| You can try if that's the case by pointing an IR remote
| control at it from close up and see if it lights up when
| you press a button.
| ncmncm wrote:
| It would be hard to detect a microsecond-long laser flash
| even in visible light, never mind infrared.
| teel wrote:
| While this seems to be a neat thing, I am just wondering how
| common nowadays are door locks that actually have a hole through
| them? Where I come from, those locks could be seen in doors of
| old cabinets and other furniture. Or perhaps at the summer
| cottage, but even there, it is usually just an old shed or
| something; any doors that are supposed to keep anything valuable
| safe, have solid lock housing, i.e. no through keyholes.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Most of the locks I've seen in my area still have a path for
| light to bleed through, but it's very, very tiny. Most likely
| not enough for this application. But peepholes are still a
| thing, not everyone has a cover on the apartment side, and the
| effects of the fisheye lens in the middle could be compensated
| for with a bit of extra math...
| djmips wrote:
| You probably don't need even need math, another lens might
| do.
| _Microft wrote:
| "Keyhole Imaging" is only a catchy name for the technique. It
| works with any other opening, like a door crack for example, as
| long as you can shine a laser through it. I would expect that
| it is even possible to use an opening that is covered by a
| light diffusing material like paper or tape on the inside.
| Instead of measuring reflections from the far wall, light
| diffused by this material would be used instead.
| silisili wrote:
| Same thought. The only house I had with an actual keyhole was
| built in 1948. Every other house I've lived in has had no such
| thing.
| nikkinana wrote:
| Gizmodo is shit, what a stupid story. Probably written by a bot.
| jstanley wrote:
| I watched the embedded video, and I see how this could plausibly
| give you the _distance_ that the photon travels between the laser
| and the object, but I don 't see how you learn anything at all
| about its direction? Wouldn't the timing look identical for all
| points that are the same distance away from the point that the
| laser meets the wall?
| exporectomy wrote:
| It requires the object to be moving. Presumably the shape of
| the burst of photons returned from a pulse changes as the
| object moves. It's obviously not simple time of flight distance
| measurement since that exists.
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| *if an object is moving a crude shape of the object can be made
| out
|
| "seeing inside a closed room" is a bit of a stretch
| hnlmorg wrote:
| I don't think it's a stretch. You are seeing inside it, just
| with extremely low fidelity but the headline made no claim
| about the fidelity.
|
| Something like this could be really useful for police or armed
| services who are about to raid a building. I'd wager they'd be
| the biggest sponsors of taking this study further.
| transpute wrote:
| Prior work, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27124691
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| That's quite a lot more than not seeing anything. Could be
| useful if your goal is to determine the number and type of
| occupants in the room before entering it. I could imagine all
| kinds of mischief bringers being interested in this.
|
| As a bonus, if your keyhole is wide enough, I guess you could
| image static objects by moving the laser around.
| krisoft wrote:
| Or you can just jam a borescope through the keyhole and see
| things that way. I don't think peeping through a keyhole into
| a room was a hard thing even before this.
| andrewla wrote:
| There is a huge market for wall scans (for non-intrusive wire
| routing) and a huge market for automatically generated floor
| plans and structural analysis (for real estate and renovation
| markets) and yet there are very few products that are effective
| in this space, which leads me to believe that the technology here
| is very much proof-of-concept and rarely if ever useful for
| anything other than a toy for research.
|
| If you can do keyhole scanning of room layouts then productize
| it!
| albinofrenchy wrote:
| This technique only works if the object inside the area is
| moving, and if you can shine a laser into the space in
| question.
| pdkl95 wrote:
| Impressive! Their technique reminds me of Dual Photography[1],
| except using the target object's motion over time instead of
| multi-dimensional lights ("projector") and/or sensors ("camera").
|
| I wonder if these techniques could be merged? Perhaps using this
| type of 1D sensor over time instead of Dual Photography's 2D
| camera?
|
| [1] https://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/dual_photography/
| harikb wrote:
| > but when paired with a properly trained image recognition AI,
| determining that a human (or human-shaped object) was in the room
| seems very feasible.
|
| I am not looking forward to some poor soul being convicted by a
| jury based on this "AI" showing his real photo
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Quote: "The research could one day provide a way for police or
| the military to assess the risks of entering a room before
| actually breaking down the door and storming their way inside,
| using nothing but a small crack in the wall or a gap around a
| window or doorway."
|
| This is ladders and walls situation. And for this technique to be
| rendered useless the antidote already exists. Criminals all they
| have to do is start using vantablack -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vantablack
| mpeg wrote:
| Or just put tape over the keyhole when you're in the house.
| jack_riminton wrote:
| When I first saw keyhole I thought they meant peephole as in the
| fish eye lens. Next paper perhaps!
|
| (edit: this is still amazing of course!)
| blitzar wrote:
| I thought keyhole satellite. Was disapointed to read they cant
| see into closed rooms from space ... yet
| hkt wrote:
| ..disappointed? Really?
| blitzar wrote:
| Absolutely, I want to hear about the technological
| breakthrough that made it possible. Control of spacetime,
| quantum something, just anything cool.
|
| Kneeling down and peeping through the keyhole was not the
| answer that I expected when I clicked through.
| hkt wrote:
| Fair enough. I suppose I was surprised because I wish
| there were some things that were just impractical to do.
| Stuff like this gives me the creeps: https://web.wpi.edu/
| Pubs/E-project/Available/E-project-04250...
|
| Still, I guess the science is interesting. I'd like it
| more if it was about eg, noninvasive diagnostic
| procedures rather than spying.
| blitzar wrote:
| All agreed - the line between interesting science and
| creepy use of said interesting science is very fine. That
| said I have long given up being outraged that carrying
| around a tracking device makes it possible to be tracked.
| transpute wrote:
| "Seeing through walls" motion detection can be done with Doppler
| imaging and commodity Wi-Fi today using custom firmware. Hundreds
| of research papers have been published on this topic. The
| upcoming IEEE 802.11bf standard is scheduled to add that
| capability to every router in 2024,
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493 &
| https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/31/wifi_devices_monitori...
|
| _> In three years or so, the Wi-Fi specification is scheduled to
| get an upgrade that will turn wireless devices into sensors
| capable of gathering data about the people and objects bathed in
| their signals... When 802.11bf will be finalized and introduced
| as an IEEE standard in September 2024, Wi-Fi will cease to be a
| communication-only standard and will legitimately become a full-
| fledged sensing paradigm... tracking can be done surreptitiously
| because Wi-Fi signals can penetrate walls, don 't require light,
| and don't offer any visible indicator of their presence._
|
| IEEE 802.11bf paper (March 2021):
| https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14918
|
| Theory: https://groups.csail.mit.edu/netmit/sFFT/soda_paper.pdf
| jl6 wrote:
| Coming soon:
|
| TV providers that charge based on how many people are in your
| living room.
|
| Peeping Tom spy devices that tell you when your neighbour is in
| the bathroom (upgrade to Pro to increase the resolution and
| find out what they're doing)
|
| Anti-alibi logs that prove whether you were or weren't alone at
| any given place or time.
|
| Industry certification schemes promising to turn this feature
| off but totally leaving the door open to anyone with a warrant
| who wishes to turn it back on.
| Loughla wrote:
| >Anti-alibi logs that prove whether you were or weren't alone
| at any given place or time.
|
| This actually gives me the most concern. If it's easy enough
| to create these logs of location and travel via technology,
| then it's easy enough to fake these logs. And, when the
| technology isn't questioned in the general population, you
| are just immediately guilty in the court of public opinion,
| let alone in actual court.
| nathanm412 wrote:
| Sooner than you might think!
|
| https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-
| tech/pa...
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Wow, soon we won't even be able to invite friends over
| anymore without the god damn copyright industry taking
| issue because not enough rent is being paid.
| erklik wrote:
| Why? What is the desired benefit from this that it's to be put
| into a standard?
| lyaa wrote:
| The decision of what gets added to such standards is largely
| a combination of politics and what is actively being used.
| Some companies and research labs wanted it to be added and
| they lobbied successfully for it.
|
| This technology is already usable with many existing routers,
| though to a lesser degree. The standard is meant to define
| expectations of how the technology is implemented in future
| 'SENS' devices.
|
| I guess it could be useful for AR/VR or replace Bluetooth in
| some location sensing applications (like in stores tracking
| movement patterns, or monitoring systems for dementia
| patients living alone).
|
| I dislike how this additional privacy infraction is going to
| be the norm in a few years.
| exporectomy wrote:
| Here's the good news description of it. Kind of unclear why
| it's so important as to put into every Wifi device though
| https://beyondstandards.ieee.org/ieee-802-11bf-aims-to-
| enabl...
| codetrotter wrote:
| From the link you posted:
|
| > Measurements obtained with WLAN sensing can be used to
| support new industrial and commercial applications in
| semiconductor manufacturing, enterprise networking, and
| test and measurement equipment. The standard will also
| benefit end user applications, such as home security,
| entertainment, energy management (HVAC, light, device power
| savings), home elderly care, and assisted living.
|
| Sounds reasonable. I still worry about what it means for
| privacy in our homes, and for the future with ever more
| surveillance and erosion of our rights.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think this is good news:
|
| "The technology can measure range, velocity, and angular
| information; detect motion, presence, or proximity; detect
| objects, people, and animals; and be used in rooms, houses,
| cars, and enterprise environments."
|
| It seems incredibly invasive. Can some peeping tom just
| turn on his WiFi base station to track if the next door
| neighbour he is obsessed with has a guy over...if she's in
| her bedroom...is in the shower...you get the idea. Creepy
| stuff!
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| Not only that but it entirely silent. At least with
| cameras or IR detectors you can kind of see where they
| are. If this becomes wide spread -- you'll have to ask
| yourself who's spying on you. Up late on a Saturday night
| at 12Am? You're uptight neighbours might want to know
| about that. On some kind of disability insurance? Good
| luck! Now they'll install this in your home (as a
| requirement) and know everything about your movements:
| the time you wake up, when you go out, when you have
| guests over...
| wpietri wrote:
| Do other people have better walls than what I'm used to?
| I already know quite a bit about where my apartment
| neighbors are in their space and what they're doing.
| kzemek wrote:
| > I'm not sure why you think this is good news:
|
| I think GP meant it's a `good (news description)`, not a
| `(good news) description`
| gonzo41 wrote:
| Time to buy shares in CAT 5 :P
| [deleted]
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I'd love to have this for home automation purposes, but I
| can't be in favour of this knowing what the standard
| FAANG companies will probably abuse this standard for,
| let alone scummy ISPs.
| mattlutze wrote:
| As something to install and run for yourself? Sounds cool
| in theory but awful for your neighbors, and what should
| be a no go generally. Think of areas where liberty and
| privacy are conditional, or indeed as a fundamental
| feature that any ISP could turn on by default in their
| mandatory router/modem boxes?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| If it works reliably, it could make it trivial to
| implement things like "turn off the lights 10 minutes
| after everyone has left the room" and "turn on the lights
| when someone enters". Right now you can still do that
| with presence sensors, but they're annoying and require
| hardware for every corner of the room to work reliably.
|
| With its band steering capabilities, I'm convinced WiFi
| can already make an approximation of your location. It
| can't deal with things like reflection and interference
| for positioning of course, but it's still pretty close to
| working already.
|
| Of course, I mean this as something I'd like to turn on
| and integrate into Home Assistant, not as something that
| every ISP router should come with (which is what I fear
| will probably happen).
| znpy wrote:
| I expect dumb limitations like "too many people around
| you, you must buy a more expensive plan to play this
| audio"
| belter wrote:
| It will probably turn off your lights when your neighbor
| goes to sleep.
| wikidani wrote:
| Yeah, I can not see a legitimate use for this technology
| and much less a reason to put it in every router. Sounds
| creepy and invasive
| withinboredom wrote:
| I imagine people will sell directional jammers to point
| at your neighbors Wi-Fi that will fiddle with the
| intensity to keep the SNR just enough to receive packets.
| brummm wrote:
| Enterprises already use Wifi to track customers in stores
| (albeit in a very simple way compared to the new
| capabilities). This will enable stores to track customers to
| a much higher degree.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| They will sell you thief protection, alarm if chidren or pets
| move to certain places, rbnb tooling and so on.
|
| And now that we all have micrphones and gps in our pockets,
| we will also accept 3d live mapping of our lives.
|
| Because "we have nothing to hide"
| zalebz wrote:
| "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they
| could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
| qwertox wrote:
| Needing to drill a hole in a wall separating two rooms in order
| to feed a cable through it recently made me think about using
| an array of ESP32 in order to attempt to create a mapping of
| the inside of the wall, so that I don't hit any pipes or
| electrical cables by accident.
|
| The walls we have here are of concrete with steel, so the
| traditional, cheap wiring / object detectors are basically
| useless.
|
| I wonder if this is possible without dedicating months of
| tinkering and possibly ending with the need to learn about AI
| to interpret the data.
| asdff wrote:
| Seems simpler to just stick a pencil in the first hole and
| see if you are clear to the other side.
| Joeri wrote:
| How would you even train the AI without building lots of
| walls of different but precisely known structures and
| densities?
| ruined wrote:
| luckily, existing walls of known construction are widely
| available
| asdff wrote:
| You'd be surprised at how many liberties contractors of
| various pay grades can take behind drywall
| withinboredom wrote:
| I would imagine a human can do it post-scan with enough
| time. If you teach an AI to do it in real-time, there's no
| need to build a bunch of walls.
| eth0up wrote:
| First: I think this comment should be a daily post on HN - a
| staple mantra of sorts, until it dents the stolid bonehead of
| collective consciousness. Glad it's top comment, even if the
| lasers got less light...
|
| Secondly to everyone; my admittedly and hopefully incorrect
| perspective deduced from such examples (there are many) is that
| there is a quiet, surreptitious attitude in elite tech that if
| there's adequate intelligence to _get away_ with something
| profitable, it 's unconditionally fair to do so - so long as
| it's not explicitly illegal in a way that can't be bypassed by
| any conceivable means. I immediately think of a common tendency
| for (most?) humans to justify the often grotesque treatment of
| animals in some industrial environments, which seems based on,
| rather than any baseline of decency, the intelligence of the
| creatures vs humans and final satisfaction of the debateably
| necessary end product; eg the same exact actions by an
| individual done for recreational purposes would be a felony.
| But I strongly suspect this attitude readily crosses the
| species gap and much of humanity is viewed thusly. They're
| dumb, vulnerable, ignorant, defenseless, etc, so let's squeeze
| em for all we can!$$$! Who wants to be millionaire?
|
| Because I perceive much of modern tech as exploitative and even
| parasitic, I wonder what a comparison between pretech and
| modern tech exploitation might reveal about the LTS version of
| ethics vs beta. I suspect that historically, exploitation was
| more kinetic, unambiguous, conspicuous and effort oriented,
| whereas modern versions are more ethereal and can take place
| remotely on an LCD screen pretty passively. In the past, a
| person typically required persuasion or proximity to make
| divulge unamiable information. Now, it is involuntarily
| invisibly siphoned and reapplied to them often undetectably,
| systematically. I suspect a novel form of unchecked
| pathological detachment in the ever-growing tech industry, when
| billions can be rapidly affected by simply executing a blob of
| effective code, and the consequences reaped as bank deposits,
| preferred coups, mass behavioral changes, etc. In this
| environment, even good-natured people can do bad natured shit
| while keeping ostensibly clean hands and feeling dignified -
| it's detached, and it's a job. Though I fear a serious
| diversion between what ought to be more parallel vectors of
| ethics and development/advancement. A rapidly accelerating
| diversion. Would this newfangled wizbang be more fugly if
| viewed holistically and are we weaving a labyrinth of
| inextricable connections that will only make less and less
| sense if viewed so? Is there really a future in merchandising
| every aspect of ourselves, selves that are targets themselves,
| intended to be corralled into market categories of exteriorly
| defined self?
|
| There are obvious complexities with concepts mentioned, in a
| nascent world where so many trades and crafts are becoming
| obsolete and people need to survive or thrive by any means
| necessary, increasingly digitally so. There's actually great
| incentive to produce really clever but dubious shit. I can't
| help but see an epoch of anomie, of unprecedented fundamental
| changes in self perception and values, a new human resulting. I
| don't presume to predict the consummation of this, but sure
| wouldn't mind skipping the median phase. I'll now tuck my cauda
| and hide, but with a question:
|
| We see that as modern technology develops, the individual is
| and has been adapting to decreasing influence of presence and
| control of it, both in personal and external application. If
| this trend continues, what are we getting ourselves into? Are
| we leaping into a collectively agreed-upon, consensually
| interpreted greater humanity that I wasn't informed of? Or are
| we a moth in deep space, fluttering toward a new light every
| moment with no shortage of singularities?
| contingencies wrote:
| We are now in an undeclared technocracy, veering toward a
| resurgence of global public acceptance of autoracy/fascism,
| while people watch TikTok.
|
| Considering recent research linked the breakdown of insect
| populations to light pollution, that's probably not such a
| bad analogy.
|
| You assume that conscious ill-will is required. The power and
| problem with human organizations is that they can achieve
| monstrous things while ignoring the results of their actions
| (see: biodiversity loss, air pollution, plastic pollution,
| nuclear weapons, etc.) while no single member or group takes
| ethical responsibility. Such failings are well studied: see
| academic literature in areas like mass psychology /
| anthropology / organizational psychology.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Really interesting how 1984 actually _underestimated_ the level
| and capabilities of invasive tracking tech. Instead of having
| the government force it on us, we just happily install it as
| the next new upgrade.
|
| I'm curious if any of the dystopian sci-fi works actually
| thought that, instead of the government forcing down and
| subduing a potentially unruly populace, that they'd basically
| use "creeping brainwashing" to actually get the populace to
| _demand_ more top-down control (e.g. how so many Chinese
| internet users are vehemently pro-government).
| nickthemagicman wrote:
| I'm torn by both how awesome this is and how creepy it's
| potential is.
| aero-glide2 wrote:
| I'm confused, doesn't commodity wifi just mean the normally
| used ones? If so why should we wait till 2024?
| belter wrote:
| "Wi-Fi is among the most successful wireless technologies ever
| invented. As Wi-Fi becomes more and more present in public and
| private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its
| ubiquitousness to implement groundbreaking wireless sensing
| applications such as human presence detection, activity
| recognition, and object tracking, just to name a few."
|
| "...and private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its
| ubiquitousness ..."
|
| Are these researchers soley focused on their next grant only,
| do they live in another world? Or do they sometimes pause and
| think about the ethics of their research?
| marcinzm wrote:
| >Are these researchers soley focused on their next grant
| only, do they live in another world? Or do they sometimes
| pause and think about the ethics of their research?
|
| Should we not do any third party security testing or
| vulnerability detection either?
|
| Ignorance is not a solution to a potential problem but simply
| means you won't know about it until it's far too late.
| gambler wrote:
| Nice funding scheme you have here. Develop a threat, write
| it up as if you're researching it for prevention. The more
| you work on it, the bigger the threat will get, the more
| money you can ask for to research "prevention" in the
| future. This is literally how a lot of this sort of
| research works.
| natpalmer1776 wrote:
| It's a digital arms race. You can't prevent it from
| happening by condeming those who are participating. These
| unfolding events are merely organic consequences to
| overarching dysfunction within society.
| __MatrixMan__ wrote:
| Seems like a convoluted way to secure research funding.
| If you don't care who you hurt it would probably be
| simpler to just go work for a defense contractor and drop
| the publication pretense altogether.
| wpietri wrote:
| Your theory is that nobody but researchers looking for
| funding to publish about threats would find these
| threats? That seems very optimistic to me.
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| Even if they do this type of research and don't release it to
| the public, you can bet nations states already are doing the
| same research in private, and using it against whoever they
| want.
|
| Better to have this in the public eye, than to be too scared
| to carry out the research in fear of others abusing it.
| because whether the research is done publicly or not, the
| "bad guys" are probably doing it in private.
| sorokod wrote:
| Wouldn't the same argument work for a research on, say,
| cheap and efficient biological weapons?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| Your threat model for ubiquitous cheap sensing tech is
| _nation states?_ I 'm not overly worried about being spied
| on by nation states. In general, my feeling is that if a
| nation-state decides I'm important enough to deploy
| hardware against, I have no real defense.
|
| Now, big tech companies putting it everywhere, and either
| convincing the stores I shop at or my neighbors to pay for
| the hardware and slurping up the data - that is a real
| danger case. And those companies build off academic
| research like this. Even trillion-dollar companies don't do
| as much of this research inhouse as they do by sponsoring
| grants like this.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| The problem is not that they can't spy on you as an
| individual. The problem is that they can spy on everyone
| all the time. And then later use an arbitrary amount of
| historical data to do whatever they want. I'd rather not
| see that any government becomes omniscient about the
| past.
| 0xdeadb00f wrote:
| Nation states was more of an example. "Anyone that isn't
| in the public eye" is what I should have said.
| BurningFrog wrote:
| We can already see where in the store you are.
| colechristensen wrote:
| But your clerks aren't going to record every step i take
| for a decade inside your store and run algorithms to
| manipulate my brain into optimizing store outcomes.
| withinboredom wrote:
| They already do this using security cameras. How do you
| think the manufacturers know which shelves and the
| placements of them to bid on?
| dharmab wrote:
| Also by tracking your phone's bluetooth and wireless
| radios! It's a bit fuzzy but useful enough to be
| generally actionable.
| andrewxdiamond wrote:
| This type of placement scoring is almost never done via
| security cameras. The CV and data storage costs required
| for that to work at scale would be enormous.
|
| It's much easier and cheaper to just record what
| shelve/height/area products are placed in and reconcile
| that data with sales. The data will be more noisy, but
| you can capture so much more valuable information for the
| same investment. You can also usually apply the models in
| retrospect, since most larger chains already record where
| products are supposed to be.
|
| Cameras are really only used at corporate test stores in
| small numbers. Camera data is usually looked at manually
| and only focuses on a specific product or area.
| mkr-hn wrote:
| Relevant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planogram
| shrike wrote:
| Absolutely they are. Nordstrom and Home Depot got called
| out for doing it 8 years ago -
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/petercohan/2013/05/09/how-
| nords.... The technology has progressed significantly
| since then.
|
| I've worked on systems designed to send in-store
| customers custom, extremely time limited (< 1 hour)
| coupons based on where they are in the store and where
| they linger. Linger time being used as an indicator of
| purchase intent for a specific item. This does require
| that the customer has the store's app installed and
| running.
| dharmab wrote:
| I remember seeing this demo five or six year ago. Not a
| theoretical or startup, but being actively tested in
| large retailers.
| relax88 wrote:
| Uhh.... we already do this:
|
| https://dnaspaces.cisco.com/
| beamatronic wrote:
| The Target app has very convenient in-store routing on a
| store map. Turn-by-turn directions down each aisle to
| bring you to the Kleenex.
| kook_throwaway wrote:
| >Your threat model for ubiquitous cheap sensing tech is
| nation states? I'm not overly worried about being spied
| on by nation states. In general, my feeling is that if a
| nation-state decides I'm important enough to deploy
| hardware against, I have no real defense.
|
| Nation states worry me precisely because I'm
| uninteresting. They wouldn't deploy hardware against me,
| but I'm under no illusion that they wouldn't use every
| mass-surveillance option available to them, including
| mass exploitation of commodity hardware.
|
| I agree wholeheartedly with the rest of your post.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| What reassure me is that the americans are so aggressive
| and dangerous that they become huge money pit target,
| leaving the rest of us quite free from foreign espionage.
| gricardo99 wrote:
| care to elaborate on this?
|
| I can't tell if you mean that most nation state espionage
| resources are spent keeping a watchful eye on the U.S.
| since they see the U.S. as aggressive and dangerous, or
| you mean that literally American citizens are aggressive
| and dangerous (i.e. perhaps due to prevalence of firearms
| with non-conformist, anti-government, anti-authority
| views), that the U.S. spends much of its own resources
| spying on its own citizens?
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| > Or do they sometimes pause and think about the ethics of
| their research
|
| Obviously they don't
| gambler wrote:
| _> Are these researchers soley focused on their next grant
| only_
|
| Yes, they are. Anyone who is saying otherwise is either
| gaslighting you or speaks out of their ass. The way science
| is funded right now is incredibly broken. This is admitted
| both by people who worked in research during 60s-70s (when
| funding worked differently) and by honest people who worked
| in modern academia.
|
| Alan Kay speaks about this often:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdHtYW_wcAs
|
| Dark Horse podcast spoke at length about the current system:
|
| https://odysee.com/@DarkHorsePodcastClips:b/corruption-in-
| sc...
| IncRnd wrote:
| I'm sure you recognize the motivations of people who would
| investigate technology that can peer into a closed and locked
| room.
|
| I recall the first time I read about using a laser to image
| the contents of a room. It was old-fashioned military
| technology when I read about it then - the 1980s.
| Joeri wrote:
| They think about it, they just consider it somebody else's
| problem.
|
| The genie is somewhat out of the bottle already, because
| existing access points can track the position of wifi devices
| and deduce a lot of this information. This takes it one step
| further to also track people without wifi devices.
| belter wrote:
| This will be deployed in 3 years or so. I think we need a
| legal and technical approach that will allow "stand your
| ground" type of rules. Against my neighbor WiFi waves and
| FFT extrapolation of what division of the house I am in at
| the moment and with who.
| ptr2voidStar wrote:
| > "Stand your ground" rules
|
| American spotted.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > The genie is somewhat out of the bottle already
|
| Very much so. As early as 2012, maybe 2013, retailers were
| piloting technology that would offer guest wifi networks,
| then track you using the in-store surveillance cameras.
| Don't even need facial recognition, just tie the person's
| identity to the phone they logged in with. The camera adds
| better location data than you could get with the wifi
| alone.
|
| This was about the time that Amazon was offering a Black
| Friday discount if you used their app to scan the barcode
| of a product in a retail store, then bought online -- and
| back then, only checkout was https, so if you were in the
| data path you could detect that sort of a lookup.
| pier25 wrote:
| I recently traveled and used JFK's free wifi. I went to a
| duty free shop to buy some chocolates and now all online
| ads ar showing me the same woman perfume ad.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Wide-band (and ultrawide-band) microwaves were already used
| for such through-wall sensing. It was just a matter of time
| before somebody noticed that there is already wide-band
| microwave transceiver in everybody's home.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Research ethics are a very important consideration, but in
| this case this research is identifying a real risk posed by
| people's widespread deployment of Wi-Fi. We need to know the
| risks it creates so we can make our choices appropriately -
| otherwise the only people who know are criminals and nation
| states.
| Darmody wrote:
| I've thought about that.
|
| But what's the alternative? Someone else would do it anyway
| and use it against you.
| EGreg wrote:
| Same argument goes for general AI, weapons and everything
| else.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| You know, you could put a simple circuit across the opening,
| powered by one of those extremely low power solar cells, handy
| RFID chip ... they could make sure you are drinking your
| verification can.
| astatine wrote:
| With this, the must have product in 2025 will be shields along
| walls and windows to keep the signals within :-)
| Communitivity wrote:
| It's more invasive than that. I've seen MIT research using
| several WiFi routers to detect heart rate and respiration[1].
| It's not too much of a leap to using it as a lie detector. A
| little more of a leap, and you get cameras watching window
| shoppers, plus some Machine Learning, to get a system able to
| detect which items excite which shoppers when they look at the
| items (via heart rate and respiration). Could also maybe be
| used to detect shoplifters.
|
| [1] https://www.medgadget.com/2014/06/mits-wifi-system-
| detects-p...
| moonchrome wrote:
| They can't get a lie detector to work with the sensors
| strapped to you...
| macksd wrote:
| How much existing advertising technology works seems to be
| questionable. Lie detectors aren't admissable in court for
| good reason, but they are still considered useful to help
| lead investigators in the right direction, especially
| against people that aren't trained or trying to defeat
| them.
| bbatha wrote:
| Mostly because of the placebo effect ie most people think
| lie detectors work and it makes you uncomfortable and
| stressed to have a device strapped to you while someone
| with authority asks serious questions.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| Does it really matter? The more ambiguous the result, the
| better for them.
| Loughla wrote:
| My experience in having a polygraph test applied to me
| after the business I worked at was robbed is that the
| results absolutely have no bearing on how the cops act
| afterward. They only bring you in for that in order to
| tell you that you failed, and should confess now in order
| to secure a lighter sentence.
|
| Had I not had a family friend who was an ex-police
| officer, I would've been absolutely scared shitless
| during that experience. Even knowing they were going to
| do it, I was still absolutely terrified.
|
| It's a fucking travesty that they are allowed to use
| pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo to terrify people into
| confessing. I lost all faith in the US police system in
| 2001 when I had to go through that. I have zero faith in
| their ability or even willingness to be 'the good guys.'
| ryan93 wrote:
| For who?
| wpietri wrote:
| For sure. If people want something enough, somebody's
| going to try to sell it to them whether or not it works.
| People really, really want lie detectors.
| knodi123 wrote:
| a stress detector that merely alerts security to take a
| closer look is a lot more achievable.
| jjaammee wrote:
| It's great for healthcare to general public. Think of cheap
| non contact heart rate monitor.
| tsjq wrote:
| this one reminds me of the movie Eagle Eye.
| mattlutze wrote:
| Slays me that wifi ended up with IEEE instead of the IETF for
| example. The profit motive really seems to drive a privacy-
| second approach to some of these standards.
| contingencies wrote:
| RF engineering is hard. IETF is ... scope averse, change
| averse, inertia-driven, and ... not exactly a bastion of
| hardware manufacturing excellence. IEEE is also way better
| than, say, the ITU, whose resistance to packet-based
| switching is famous and whose systems in that space are
| largely semi-mythical to extinct and who are politically
| inclined to actively stand for centralized and billable
| systems in lieu of decentralized local communications.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| > tracking can be done surreptitiously because Wi-Fi signals
| can penetrate walls, don't require light, and don't offer any
| visible indicator of their presence.
|
| Maybe lead paint and aluminum siding will come back into style.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| Not lead, but same idea [1] It takes a few coats and proper
| grounding.
|
| [1] - https://www.google.com/search?gbv=1&q=emf+shielding+pai
| nt&oq...
| sgc wrote:
| How big do windows / glass doors need to be before that is
| more or less compromised?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I don't have a specific formula to answer your question,
| but there will be leakage regardless of size. This can be
| partially mitigated with metal screens or fully mitigated
| part time using steel scroll shutters or steel door
| shutters. Steel scroll shutters have the benefit of
| adding R/U insulation rating in cold weather and in some
| cases can improve physical security.
| sgc wrote:
| We want to be able to get natural light and air into the
| house. I can make a safe room if I need to, but this is
| an always-on threat and we can't respond with whole house
| unhealthy environments. Grounded metal (copper or
| aluminum) screens should work quite well if designed for
| the application I would think. But that means 100%
| screening, no fully transparent openings. Maybe we can
| come up with fluid filled windows that provide the
| required shielding. What a PITA.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| You can get window film that's RF shielded. It's weird to
| be in a SCIF with windows, but a welcome change from the
| norm.
|
| Example vendor: https://www.signalsdefense.com/rf-window-
| films/
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So how do I jam these signals?
| snarf21 wrote:
| Besides not using WiFi? If you want WiFi to work on your
| phone while lying in bed, then that requires Wifi signals in
| your bedroom. Also, remember that they are putting "smarts"
| into every appliance under the sun, including tea kettles. It
| is going to be a race to sell information about users from
| every manufacturer. Even if you go to zero smart devices, are
| your neighbors going to be less enlightened?
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I don't know. I just want countermeasures against the
| dystopian technology we'll be facing in the future. If some
| device tries to image me or my home without my consent,
| they shouldn't get any useful information.
|
| Maybe a signals jammer? Maybe some wall material that
| blocks signals outside our homes? Custom firmware for our
| WiFi access points to ensure they aren't doing this, or
| ensure that they do it in our terms and for our own use
| instead of some surveillance capitalism nightmare?
| e_proxus wrote:
| My sci-if part of my brain tells me that in 10-20 years we'll see
| small box-like devices that you attach to a key/peep hole or
| perhaps with a built in silent needle puncher that creates a
| small hole on-demand. Perhaps with a moving laser that would
| imagine still objects too.
|
| Combine that with AR glasses and you would have a useful pre-
| breach tool for police/military.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| I'm sure something like this exists somewhere already.
|
| I bought a tiny camera on the end of a 50' coax cable to fix a
| plumbing issue on Amazon for $40... that tech was James Bond
| stuff 30 years ago!
| bufferoverflow wrote:
| Did it help with the plumbing issue?
| HWR_14 wrote:
| As far as I know, the military and SWAT already use boroscope
| style cameras with microlenses to see inside pre-breach. I'm
| not sure this is an improvement
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Boroscopes require you to have physical access and in some
| cases drill the hole.
|
| This can probably be developed to be a remote sensing
| solution with quite a bit of range and with a non visible it
| won't be noticeable to adversaries.
|
| This single laser technique also likely has implications for
| other NLOS imaging situations too for example imaging a force
| behind cover by illuminating an area within line of sight of
| both you and the target.
| asdff wrote:
| It would be cool if you could just shoot the plug into a
| building and it would bore in and start collecting data. You
| could fly a drone over town with one of these guns and shoot a
| probe into every structure.
| _Microft wrote:
| They will just silently access the brain interface of one of
| the people in the room and see with their eyes instead. If the
| suspects are lucky, the police will even get a warrant for that
| first.
| tyingq wrote:
| I'm confused by this. You can buy a 1.8mm borescope online for
| $1k. I imagine professional spy organizations have much thinner
| ones or fiber optic options. So if you already have a hole, how
| is this helping? Dark rooms? Or an instant room layout maybe for
| breaching?
| crispyambulance wrote:
| I think it's more of a exploration of what information is
| possible to gather from just scattered light with time of
| flight measurements and a lot of computation.
|
| It has little to do with "keyholes", other than to give readers
| an illustrative idea about the experimental setup.
| egberts1 wrote:
| That's why Cylons only have one laser beam.
| ricardo81 wrote:
| I remember seeing something similar but with audio instead of
| light. The reverberations of a sound bouncing off objects allowed
| for the mapping of an enclosed space.
| dekhn wrote:
| I guess more generally, a point beam can expose everything that's
| directly accessible by raycasting through the numerical aperture
| of a hole without reflections, so long as you can alter the angle
| of the emitter.
| Drblessing wrote:
| Pretty cool proof of concept!
| redm wrote:
| The technology is neat but I can't help wondering who has a
| keyhole anymore that you could actually shine a laser through?
| ballarak wrote:
| I mean, they could probably just as easily use a window.
| momirlan wrote:
| No doubt this will be used in military and surveillance long
| before society sees any benefit.
| hoppla wrote:
| There are usually some space to move the laser around, even if
| you are restricting yourself to a keyhole. Would that not be
| sufficient to detect the location and shapes of objects related
| to the movement of the laser?
| torgian wrote:
| So then, what's the countermeasure to this? It's probably already
| being used for nefarious purposes. So how do you counter it?
| samstave wrote:
| you need to wear a faraday suit.
| torgian wrote:
| Why not just enclose your room in a faraday cage? Maybe you
| won't have WiFi but at least other people's networks can't
| deep into your space
| m12k wrote:
| "can expose everything inside a room"
|
| Can estimate the size, position and movement direction of moving
| objects within a room.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| "We got a blob at 2 o'clock that's holding some kind of a
| Kalashniblob and in the other hand it looks like either a large
| donut or a beret of the National Liberation Front."
| dogma1138 wrote:
| And shape... based on the recovered data this would be
| sufficient to say figure out the position of hostiles in a room
| in a hostage situation for example.
| asdff wrote:
| How do you know whats a hostile and whats a hostage? I think
| that was a movie trope too of dressing up hostages as
| hostiles and them getting shot by their rescuers.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| The images they recovered were clear enough to see who's
| holding weapons...
| asdff wrote:
| So the hostiles in this case would just tape guns with
| empty clips into the hostages hands.
| dogma1138 wrote:
| Real life isn't a movie... and even if it was hostages
| don't move like hostage takers do.
| [deleted]
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Now...all we need to do, is find doors with old-fashioned
| keyholes...
| junon wrote:
| Come to Germany, there are loads here.
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