The reason the FCC is only allowing the sale of state approved routers in the US?
“Oh my goodness, this is a nightmare” typed everyone into their government approved location recording devices that can show them cats and boobs.
Gimme cat boobs.
I am pretty sure you can find those on the MSG website!
wearing a smartwatch that constantly outputs an identifier.
It is easier to just give up and submit, I’ll grant you that.
Huh? No cats on mine , weird.
Sounds faulty
If I was a capitalist, knowing I am few and and my power only comes from the resources I own, resources stolen from the masses. I would use my stolen wealth to safe guard my own class interests against the masses. Hence we see surveillance capitalism.
IIRC, when Meta bought out iRobot, it slipped out that they were using Roombas to collect the square footage and entire layout of your house to add to your data sets. So this doesn’t seem surprising at all. Good thing I configure my own router and firewall.
That’s it, I’m gonna start violently beating my meat at my router if this is what they’re going for.
Assert dominance
You get it.
“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.
Do you think every country has its own router hardware manufacturer and commodity chip manufacturer? 😂
The 2 giants that make 95% of consumer routers around the world and the few companies that design the chips for them are both in heavy surveillance states.
does not matter if the factory software just uploads the info because you wouldn’t know anyway
Die shrinks effect long term durability. We passed that point around 10-14nm
From what I’ve just read, the tech doesn’t seem ready to identify people yet. It can supposedly detect hand gestures, but facial recognition I seriously doubt. But that’s probably just a matter of improving the tech. See this article for more info.
From OPs linked article…
In tests involving 197 participants, the researchers said the system identified individuals with nearly 100% accuracy. The recognition remained effective regardless of viewing angle or how the participants walked.
I can totally believe when it tracks a person it can tell when the same person walks by again later. But matching people with their actual identities would require a database of wifi scan data that simply doesn’t exist yet.
that’s a load bearing “yet”
Well in theory every tech possibility is a “yet”, but the way I read this it seems like a person or object’s interference pattern is particular to the local signal environment - not like a fingerprint a different system could recognize at the airport.
that’s a trivial problem to solve. combine this with a camera for facial recognition in a public space. then you’ve got wifi signature combined with the photo/video for facial recognition. then presumably you can use the WiFi signature anywhere else, even without the camera and be able to identify people.
I was wondering about that. The article didn’t say anything about being able to identify the same person walking past a different router. And I can’t imagine the study didn’t try. So I assume it doesn’t work.
That’s connection history. CSI motion detection software storing information it collects would be entirely independent of that. How much it saves and for how long would depend on the size of the router’s memory.
Ok now what router do I buy and what firmware do I flash to plug this into Home Assistant?
and how do you protect yourself against the neighbors devices, especially in a densely populated building
Faraday cage, it’s going to be a hassle to wiremesh your entire apartment, and you can forget using a mobile phone inside of it, but there are no outside signals getting in that way.
Have fun watching me be balls deep in my partner, fed boys. Be jelly cause you can’t fuck like me.
I’m already envious 🙂↕️
I’m sure you fuck good or will one day if you haven’t already.
They’re cucks. They’re into that.
It would be great if there were some open source tool kits for this. If the technology is going to exist it should be in the hands of the people.
Damn, I thought I called it 8 months ago, but that was about reading heart rates using wifi…
Yeah it’s nuts. There’s also https://www.tommysense.com/ which is planning individual presence detection and location tracking within rooms using an esp32 mesh, but that’s closed source
No cameras (total privacy)
Seems not for long…
MVP
Yeah, if this shit has to exist, at least let me use it for presence detection in Home Assistant without having to buy separate sensors or something!
It would be amazing to not have to deploy a network of esp32s to do it with Bluetooth.
Although I’m already putting one in each room.
Probably just need a protocol to work with the data, however it can be interfaced with. Is it just measuring signal strength via speed over time?
If you’re technical you might like enjoy this article that explains how the tracking works. Basically the router can perform math on the interference created by objects moving around the room. It seems like this would have to be part of the router firmware, which doesn’t sound like a standard feature. But if it is, the fix would be to install modified firmware with that function disabled. The smoking gun will be if somebody gets into DMCA trouble for doing this.
New person in room detected, please drink verification can.
that’s not a sufficient fix when you are living very close to other households
A sufficient fix is not letting your wifi devices connect to your neighbor’s network so their router can detect you walking between it and them.
my devices don’t, but unless I misunderstood it it does not matter whether you are connected to the neighbor’s router
Wifi tracking uses measurements of the interference caused when objects pass between connected devices and a router. For your neighbors to track your movements their router would have to be connected to a device in your house, or maybe in the other neighbor’s house on the far side of your house, so when you walk around it interferes with that signal.
Or an open source hardware device that changes your “wifi signature” randomly.
Opensource tech to do the same thing has been in the hands of the people for a long time. This is just a different way of doing it without motion sensors.
these are not just motion sensors. these are much more accurate than that.
The motion sensing is more accurate in terms of fundamentally detecting movement, but if you’re going from that to assuming it can identify who you are, no it doesn’t do that. It can recognize a person as the same person it saw in the room yesterday, based on their gait and their effect on the local wifi signal, but it has no way of knowing if the pattern belongs to Old Man Wilson or Old Lady Jenkins, because there’s no database tying those patterns to people’s identities. And besides, the patterns are specific to that one signal environmnent anyway. It’s not like a fingerprint or a facial image you could record at home and then match to someone walking around in a store, which has a different signal environment.
it cannot identify persons, but it can figure out their position and roughly what are they doing.
Exactly. It can tell that Person A just lit a cigarette and Person B is taking a shit. The possibilities are terrifying!
its bad enough, and I don’t know what to say if you think this is a nothingburger
This technology has been publicly demonstrated about 3 years ago, but I imagine it has been done years and years back. It’s really nothing mind blowing, just the way waves work, workaround believe it or not is the tin foil your walls.
There is now a free home assistant plugin to implement it at home lol. Crazy shit. Imagine what’s possible with classified tech.
I’ve seen YouTube videos of people able to record the image of the the vibration of a potato chip bag through a window to recreate the audio from the room.
That’s pretty neat
Christoffer Nolan predicted this!
I clearly need watch more Batman.
Nothing new for infosec people…
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.
From what I’ve read this is built into the required wifi router for Xfinity. I discovered this when I signed up for Xfinity fiber, had the fiber installed and setup and then cancelled it the same day, because of this and not being able to buy and run my own hardware, and needing to install an app on my phone to manage the router, and apparently not being able to choose my DNS. They required that I rent their hardware for an additional $15/mo. Oh well, at least fiber is in the house now, if anyone wants it in the future. I sure won’t be paying them to spy on me.
Fuck Comcast, still.
app to manage router
This shit was a pain in the ass and now learning about this makes me feel even more pissed off as a customer
Damn. Put a faraday cage around the router and plug in your own router to a LAN port.
Wrap it in aluminum foil.
Whilst this sounds a lot like a foil hat joke, that’s literally the easiest way to wrap something in a conductive material cage (i.e. a faraday cage).
If you don’t want it to look ridiculous, put it inside a box whose inside has been lined with aluminum foil.
Mind you, personally I too would just cancel that shit, but the option is there to carry on using it whilst blocking its radio emissions.
FWIW I was able to use my own router when I set up with Xfinity recently
This was fiber, if that makes a difference. I asked the install guy, he called his boss, because no one had asked him that before. He told me “no, it’s not allowed”. Also, I tried plugging the patch cable directly into my own wifi router and nothing.
Also, I tried plugging the patch cable directly into my own wifi router and nothing.
The router would need to be explicitly configured to connect to your account on the network, which would require certain information provided by the ISP, which it sounds like they weren’t going to provide.
All inferred from the response I got from the tech.
That’s because Xfinity offers motion sensing as a feature, which requires this tech in the router. Presumably it’s configurable and costs extra to turn on.
It’s a “costs extra feature” for the customer. But, they have access to it regardless of whether it’s “turned on”. It’s never turned off for them. And, if that puts me in tin-foil hat territory, so be it.
Comcast is why I have starlink
How is this better???
Product idea: clothing with jaged edges and radio absorbing plates.
Stealth Bomber Jacket.
WiFi jamming underpants.
Don’t give Musk the idea of the CyberShirt.
Necessary accessory called cyberBra for that real car hood look
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.
My understanding is that this catches disruptions between devices and router. I don’t think this would work. I would say you should instead sell a “bracelet” with “ancient Himalayan Salt” embedded into the silicone to absorb and cancel the tracking. It would probably sell a ton! Obviously wouldn’t work but $!
Well you can’t stop it from knowing something is there. But you should be able to confuse it’s identification of a specific person.
Yeah probably but if you’re going to this much trouble to spy, you’re may as well put gait analysis on it.
I don’t know if it can actually see your gait. Might be that your legs are technically invisible to it. It’s just looking at how you uniquely disturb wifi signals. It maybe that your torso does most of that or something.
You can buy faraday bag cloth. It’s expensive.
Or just DIY using tinfoil
So…back to wired?
You being wired doesn’t stop WiFi seeing you.
It will in my own home when there is no wifi.
I suspect it applies to 5G phone signals too (because they are in a similar frequency) so you need to live where there are no nearby 5G masts and all your visitors must use Faraday bags.
So it’s now impossible to prevent them from watching me in my own home without making massive sacrifices and costs?
Sure as well is awkward for a mobile phone.
Maybe short distance low power milimeterwave can work. It won’t penetrate through walls.
