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Comment by EveYoung | Hacker News Reader

Not trying to be provocative, but how is this any worse than existing cameras or motion sensors?

With cameras and motion sensors you more or less know how they'll be used and as a user you can choose to disable them (or at the very least block them if you can't disable them).

With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether. Added to that, I'll bet that most people wouldn't even begin to imagine that WiFi could be used for sensing people, and they'll continue using WiFi without being aware for the grave privacy implications.

There's no reason to assume any of that.

> With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether.

It's rather unreasonable to think that you won't be able to turn off band on router. Especially given fact that 60Ghz is heavily shielded by _doors_, so any usable router would require fallback 2.4/5/6 Ghz connectivity.

802.11bf Wi-Fi 7 Sensing works with all frequencies, 2.4 and up.

Even if Neighbor 2 turns off their router, Neighbor 1 could passively use the radio waves from Neighbor 3's router to surveil reflections from Neighbor 2, including keyboard typing, heartrate/breathing, location and physical activity.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493

The problem with this neighbor-spying fear is that "complex math using data from radio waves to sense stuff" is already possible and readily available by anyone willing to study and put in the world of building it, wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics.

> wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics

It makes it suddenly ubiquitous when all new WiFi devices use the new standard.

Removing the PhD-level knowledge requirement from this particular mode of being an asshole doesn't sound like much of an improvement

yes, but the real threat with this is not that it makes something possible that is already possible, but it makes the barrier to use that tech a LOT lower.

Wrapping my house in tin foil is sounding a lot less conspiracy theorist now! Actually my house is going to be stuccoed - I wonder if they are using a metal mesh that I can ground. Hmm...

RF is far less hindered by stuff like walls.

Your next door neighbor’s wifi will know your every movement, and can probably image it too. End of privacy within closed doors.

This is hyperbole. 60GHz cannot penetrate walls and closed doors. 2.4GHz and 5GHz lack the resolution to image you, especially if your adversary only has control of one AP. There are already tons of side channel attacks with existing WiFi and Bluetooth that reveal when someone is in the area. Your neighbour could already be tracking your devices, for all you know.

Here are 400 research papers on Wi-Fi sensing with 2.4/5Ghz, https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external

Thank you! Also, I can lid the device in a drawer. It’s greatly different than tracking exactly what I’m doing in any room. Also, consider flats next to each other.

Do you have those at home?

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