The Sapienza computer scientists say Wi-Fi signals offer superior surveillance potential compared to cameras because they’re not affected by light conditions, can penetrate walls and other obstacles, and they’re more privacy-preserving than visual images.
[…] The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture.
Neat. Good luck protecting yourself from this.
On the other hand, I’m seriously considering opening an Etsy shop selling foil-lined clothes. I’m pretty good at sewing. What do you think?
You’d need fabric with continuous metallic threads that form a complete mesh to actually block the 2.4/5GHz signals - most DIY foil approaches leave gaps that WiFi can still penetrate thru.
I feel like you’re overthinking this. There are people who buy crystal-infused drinking cups to reset their personal feng shui. (Spoiler: it’s just glitter.)
I really wish I didn’t have morals. It’s so easy to make money if you’re willing to fleece people.
e: autocorrect
Or sell a “WiFi mask” to modify the signal to look like celebrities.
It’s so true. Would you like to buy some Trump memorabilia? Made in 100% American spirit in China
I think you will be the one guy in the crowd wearing foil-lined clothes.
Then I’ll look for the person with the fingerprint of foil-lined clothes
Not if everyone buys it, because then we’d all look the same
I was having a nice day :(
Yes, according to your wifi fingerprint, you had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQn9L-wkq_c&t=1m29s
Chuck vindicated. What a chicanery.
That’s a very unique fingerprint he’s got.
“Hey boss come look. This microwave is walking around again”
Reminds me of the Christian Bale batman movie where he could spy on everywhere from the bat cave. Seemed so far fetched it almost ruined the movie
No-one suspected Bruce Wayne’s “free WiFi for Gotham City” initiative
It was very much not even far fetched at that point. 1984 wrote about the same kind of surveillance, and at that time it would have been pretty far fetched. It was published in 1949; the video camera was only 24 years old at that point.
Can I become obese in a day to avoid being fingerprinted?
I did that over 40 years.
Doesn’t help.
Stilsuits: get it for the unbearable heat as we turn the Earth into a desert, now with wifi blocking!
95.5% accuracy is abysmal for any use case these people want to use it for
It’s not at all bad for an initial proof of concept.
what if you combine it with other types of imaging
Dingdingding
I’ve seen some article recently that the patterns of Wi-Fi/Bluetooth (don’t remember which one) interference with brainwaves can be scanned to reconstruct brainwave signature remotely, meaning that it might be possible to scan anyone’s EEG from Wi-Fi/Bluetooth distance. And there are some AI advancements for reconstructing inner monologue from EEG. So maybe we’re not so far from actual remote mind-reading.
You had non work related thoughts on three separate occasions last week. Please report to HR for attitude adjustment.
A truly horrifying prospect.
Tuesday, in 2025.
No. It’s Friday.
No! This is Patrick!
I’m impressed there’s a gif for this 🤣
🏆 Here is an award for the best comment in the thread.
This may be the largest gap between the quality of an actors performance vs the movie it’s in.
Truly an abysmal movie, but Rahul Julia is so much fun to watch in it.
Time for tin foil hats
Someone’s going to use this to drop missiles on “baddies” with their sleeping families in 3 2 1
Reporting about starving children? That will be capital punishment for the whole family.
they’re more privacy-preserving than visual images.
hhhhwat. How can they identify you and also be privacy preserving? 🤔
Well, the alternative would be a camera in every toilet stall. See how our benevolent corporate overlords only have our best interest in mind?
They know you are a person and they can call your a certain UUID, but there will be a hard time matching you to your name etc.
Camera’s can do face recognition (if your face is even in the database) to know who you are.
This only works until the point where they have your form in a database which they can check…
We have heard this non-sense before, only to find it’s trivially easy to connect to your PID.
Never said that it wasn’t easy, it’s just harder than with facial recognition. In theory you could do it correctly in a way that it isn’t indentifiable.
Also this works in places where faces are protected
I’d imagine it’s like online advertisers: they convert your fingerprint to a token to try to sell you shit, but they allegedly don’t know who exactly you are or where you go. So visiting animatedllamaporn.com is still your little secret…
They can see you’re a person but not exactly who you are.
How is that a “fingerprint”?
Well they can identify you are the same person but not your identity… So it’s like a disenbodied fingerprint.
I suppose they could potentially make some database and train an AI on it someday to match to actual identities, but usefulness would be pretty limited at only 95% accuracy. That’s a false reading 1/20 times, so I suspect it would fail bigly to accurately recognize people from large data sets.
That’s a false reading 1/20 times
And when has something like that ever stopped anyone?
Well okay you’re not wrong, there is always some sucker out there.
It’s all AI. You should not worry about it. In fact you should not think about it. All is going to be fine.
This is fine.
you can also take a picture of a person with a camera that senses light beams
The most primitive of physics concepts, the transmission/absorption/reflection of energy, is completely unknown to most people it would seem.
Incorrect bio-signature detected, drink verification can to continue your content.
Legendary reference
deleted by creator
Great, another dystopian way for authorities to observe me on the shitter
Your poo time has expired and your pay is docked. Flushing will cost 50 dollars for the next week. Get back to work
Strange. Shitting on your bosses desk is still free. Hmm. Interesting loophole.
You get poo time? That’s socialism!
All time is poo time when you’re close to the boss’s desk
Please drink a verification laxative?
So, you’re saying the tin foil hat people were right all along?!
Ironically, they’re still wrong, because even in their wildest conspiracies, they didn’t imagine Wi-Fi could be used to “take pictures” of a sort.
Tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists predate wifi by at least a decade
