[HN Gopher] Person-in-WiFi: Fine-Grained Person Perception Using...
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       Person-in-WiFi: Fine-Grained Person Perception Using WiFi [pdf]
        
       Author : RCitronsBroker
       Score  : 92 points
       Date   : 2023-11-29 16:19 UTC (6 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.ri.cmu.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.ri.cmu.edu)
        
       | verdverm wrote:
       | I find these applications intriguing for VR/AR/XR, but there are
       | also the privacy concerns. I can see internet providers and big
       | tech really wanting to leverage this data for profit
        
         | RCitronsBroker wrote:
         | the privacy concerns are really something. Background emission
         | is pretty much as abundant as ambient light these days, at
         | least within the radius of day-to-day living. even in less
         | developed countries. Western signals intelligence gathering
         | already reached critical mass, the decision to deploy dragnets
         | collecting the tons of data we all produce every day, has
         | already been made.
         | 
         | Just frightening to think about the never ending increase in
         | detail and variation when it comes to the data to be collected.
         | 
         | but look, 300 bucks for the privilege of inviting a self-
         | propelled LiDAR scanner, complete with internet connection and
         | non-optional user registration, into your domicile! It can
         | vacuum too? Sound like a deal to me!
        
           | verdverm wrote:
           | I'm less worried about the govt surveillance and more so
           | about abusive advertising, though I wonder how much
           | additional insights it will really provide. The amount the
           | data brokers and scientists can infer already is pretty
           | astounding
        
             | ifyoubuildit wrote:
             | Why not both? Both are bad and both should be minimized.
        
               | verdverm wrote:
               | The government has ample ways to get the same data via
               | other means and probably more sophisticated tech. I would
               | imagine they are well beyond this
               | 
               | I also don't do things that would have them watching or
               | worrying about me, so not really concerned personally and
               | only see the upside to the government / military having
               | this capability, with appropriate oversight (which I'm
               | sure many will imply is non-existant)
               | 
               | There is a valid product offering for ISPs, monitoring
               | people for medical emergencies. I suspect this will be
               | how it gets accepted by many people
        
               | ifyoubuildit wrote:
               | Would you say this is any different from the classic "I
               | have nothing to hide" argument?
               | 
               | Edit:
               | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument
        
           | qiine wrote:
           | I wonder if at some point the amount of data each individual
           | produce would be so large and contradicting that it would be
           | almost unusable by all but the most advance tech department
           | and with great resources.
        
           | Ruthalas wrote:
           | Though only tangentially relevant, I can recommend Valetudo
           | as a way to take control of your vacuum's firmware.
        
         | nashashmi wrote:
         | Why should privacy be the objective of the scientist?
        
           | iinnPP wrote:
           | It's where the truth lives.
        
           | verdverm wrote:
           | I'm not faulting the the scientists here, they aren't the
           | first to do this. I remember seeing similar from a US
           | university research a few years back. This reminded me about
           | the latest wifi-6E(?) that's going to make this easier for
           | ISPs to obtain similar tracking capabilities.
           | 
           | I for one always own my wifi/modem stack rather then renting
           | the one from the ISP
        
           | terminous wrote:
           | I mean, why should any scientist think about ethics? [INSERT
           | $GOLDBLUM_QUOTE HERE]
           | 
           | Also, when you start to invent new technology, you're not
           | just a dispassionate objective scientist pushing the
           | boundaries of knowledge. You're an engineer whose products
           | are also engineering society.
        
       | polygamous_bat wrote:
       | Missing (2019) in the title.
        
         | Flockster wrote:
         | Yes, the paper linked to by firebirdn99 is much more recent and
         | shares an author.
        
       | firebirdn99 wrote:
       | I remember seeing many posts about this in the last few yrs, one
       | - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34423395
        
         | mhb wrote:
         | Well the paper is from 2019.
        
       | eximius wrote:
       | Does anyone know of a way to replicate these results at home,
       | even at lower fidelity? I've never found code I could run and it
       | seems to always involve extra bespoke antennas/drivers.
        
         | antoniuschan99 wrote:
         | This is similar but should be enough to get you started!
         | https://github.com/espressif/esp-csi
        
       | demondemidi wrote:
       | At Intel, Bob's contributions to Northwood were credited as "the
       | first x86 architecture that can no longer be comprehended in its
       | entirety by a single individual." Basically it was his Swan Song
       | proving there is a limit to how far you can push x86 CISC before
       | it implodes.
        
         | yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
         | Wrong article
        
       | riffic wrote:
       | great, now what are the applications and how will this be
       | commercialized into a torment nexus?
        
         | awakeasleep wrote:
         | The same way police go directly to Amazon to get home security
         | camera footage from Nest devices, they will be able to work
         | with your ISP (if you rent a modem-router-ap) or cloud-based-
         | network-gear provider to pull this data from people's houses
         | when serving no-knock warrants or investigate crimes.
        
           | oldge wrote:
           | You mean ring? Nest is a google property. Doesn't even use
           | aws, so pretty sure Amazon would just give the police a dumb
           | look if they were asked for footage from nest cameras. Also
           | last I checked nest was one of the better players in this
           | regard requiring warrants and had rigid public data retention
           | processes in place to limit what could be pulled.
        
           | imhoguy wrote:
           | https://xkcd.com/538/
           | 
           | but seriously, ISPs can already provide MAC addresses of all
           | active client devices at the building at any time, no need to
           | tell the dog from the owner puzzle by sci-fi tech.
        
       | Uehreka wrote:
       | I was looking into this recently, because I recalled seeing the
       | video of this on Twitter a few years back and wanted to see if I
       | could reproduce it. But the WiFi signal strength tools they used
       | appear to be abandonware, and according to this researcher they
       | may not have even accomplished this task at all:
       | https://medium.com/@tsardoz/researchers-misrepresenting-the-...
       | 
       | Archive link: https://archive.is/MnOv0
        
         | jimmySixDOF wrote:
         | You don't have to wait too long this functionality has been
         | baked into WiFi7 with SENS 802.11bf
        
           | mlhpdx wrote:
           | I hope folks understand what this means - there will be an
           | IEEE standard that makes using Wi-Fi sensing, to some degree,
           | hardware agnostic and thereby drives it into mainstream.
        
             | 3np wrote:
             | Wild. These seem to be decent intros.
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14918
             | 
             | https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.04859
        
         | riedel wrote:
         | Actually I last month reviewed also a wifi sensing paper and
         | somehow it also did not really elaborate on the validation
         | scheme. It seems that still some better standards need to be
         | estaished. Often it is to good to be true.
        
       | JRKrause wrote:
       | Using neural networks to solve inverse-scattering problems (like
       | wifi scattering off a human body, for example) seems to have a
       | lot of potential. The lack of phase-information (i.e. not just
       | signal intensity but instantaneous phase of the EM wave) captured
       | by traditional receivers makes this class of problems so
       | difficult to approach since you are blind to a significant
       | portion of the available EM information. Mitigating this by
       | constraining your solution-space to 'reasonable' outcomes is
       | practically very difficult... for a human. Very cool to see such
       | a practical demonstration of a neural network seeming to
       | accomplish exactly this.
        
       | cchance wrote:
       | Wasn't there something like this a while back where somehow had
       | designed an "xray scanner" that used peoples wifi routers to do
       | it?
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-29 23:00 UTC)