So...back to wired?
this post was submitted on 24 May 2026
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Sure as well is awkward for a mobile phone.
Mass data mixed with machine learning pattern identification means what already exists will lead to broken as fuck capabilities for those who own everyone. Ie. Not us.
Ok now what router do I buy and what firmware do I flash to plug this into Home Assistant?
"Oh my goodness, this is a nightmare" typed everyone into their government approved location recording devices that can show them cats and boobs.
wearing a smartwatch that constantly outputs an identifier.
and this is why you should flood your home with as many APs as possible. I have 17 APs running in my 1000sqft house.
can't find shit if it's too noisy.
If you read the article ( https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/3719027.3765062 ) they are testing this in an EXTREMELY controlled enviroment and directed subjects... I have my doubts that this could provide any insight on whether this is even feaseble for public surveillance, let alone effective...
It's also only possible because the information they used (BFI) is unencrypted.
It gets more accurate with more access points, too. So corporate and education settings will be the easy places for this to get implemented.
I can tell you as someone who read the papers on very early deepfakes and AI video generation with amazement followed by dread, this is going to be feasible on a large scale in a short period of time. Researchers do stuff on an absolute shoestring budget usually, it's incomparable to what large companies and governments have at their disposal. There are already consumer products that were able to become fairly precise motion sensors with just a firmware update. Next gen devices will be built with motion fingerprinting in mind, I can almost guarantee it.
Walk without rhythm and we won't attract the ~~worm~~ big brother.
At this point I'd prefer the Chinese routers.
The question with mandating US made routers may be either to protect citizens from foreign attacks - or to make sure every US router is a router with a government-approved backdoor.
On which option would you bet?
Why not both?
Because they ignored the first issue for long enough, so it is more or less a non-issue for the US government.
"Identify" seems like a very misleading word in this context. Isn't it just detecting and locating? Or am I misunderstanding and they can tell me and my roommate appart?
Height and body mass
That's cool and all but if true, why use an animated photo instead of a real life example?
a real life example? you mean like a photo of a person next to a router?
I'm not sure what you think an "example" would look like. It's not taking a photo of you, it's measuring what's distinctive about the way you personally mess up radio signals and how it differs from how other people mess them up. Internally it's just a ton of numbers.
I assume they want to take those numbers and make a visual representation like a radar return or ultrasound image. Probably wouldn't really look like anything but still it'd be pretty sick to impress your friends by looking at your 2nd screen filled with green matrix vertical scrolling shit and be like: "the cat wants out."
Pretty sure this is old news? It's basically sonar, which The Dark Knight predicted in the film.
Edit: a word
Like a submarine.
Right? Im pretty sure this is a few years stale and already incorporated in some isps routers
https://www.xfinity.com/hub/smart-home/wifi-motion
https://www.originwirelessai.com/isps-can-do-more-with-wifi-sensing/
https://www.technologyreview.com/2024/02/27/1088154/wifi-sensing-tracking-movements/
The statement from the article was the unlike previously, they used current consumer equipment, and could uniquely identify a specific person. I believe previous versions could just identify that there was "A" person. I don’t know that all that is true, but it is what the article says, and my vague memories line up.
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Product idea: clothing with jaged edges and radio absorbing plates.
Funnily enough, indoors, this would probably make you more visible as the only area with no reflections. Stealth works outdoors because the sky does not have a radar return.
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Any reason this wouldn't work with cell towers?
Yes, it wouldn't really.
Right now the way this works is that a human body absorbs a certain about it wifi signal, so of the signal strength in a room dips and comes back up, someone walked through the room, for example. Couple this with what IPs and MAC addresses the router is connecting to, and Verizon can tell "human with laptop," or "human watching TV." So just "human body" or dog/cat are what it can detect. Verizon does try and sell this as a feature, as in a shit security feature.
So for cell towers, they're too far from people in an already chaotic environment to really be useful. Trees, cars, and a million other things can throw off trying to detect already minute changes in signal density. Not to mention that the signals from cell towers are much stronger, so harder to detect the changes.
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Despite what others have said. It could in theory. But could it work with ordinary cell towers today, probably not. I base this on the accuracy of current location tracking by cell towers. They still use triangulation from my understanding, and aren't highly accurate at that. The space your phone could be in is large enough for many people to be. So the granularity just isn't there.
This is probably because of the large range they cover compared to the power levels they use. But in theory if the density of towers were higher, and the power levels were increased, they could probably do it in at least some locations with the perfect conditions.
There is another potential issue, which is the frequency. The lower the frequency, the less it will interact with an obstacle including people.
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"This technology turns every router into a potential means for surveillance," warns Julian Todt from KASTEL. "If you regularly pass by a café that operates a WiFi network, you could be identified there without noticing it and be recognized later -- for example by public authorities or companies."
Later...
Inexpensive or older routers either don’t store history at all or keep it for a short time.
Newer models can store more information for more extended periods.
https://www.thetechwire.com/how-long-does-a-router-store-history/
We used to recommend people to run the newest stuff possible, but we came to a point that maybe it's better for us to keep with older tech for a good while
Or go to more civilized countries for vacation to get not backdoored hardware.
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