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> this was literally used as a plot point in one of the batman movies a decade ago to highlight how dangerously invasive tech can be.

In the movie Charlie’s Angels (2000) the supervillain technology allowed them to track the locations of the vast majority of people on the planet in realtime.

The real world has already jumped the shark for many different fictional supervillain doomsday technologies.

I had a discussion with my church group about this and it was absolutely fascinating. On the one hand they welcomed the ubiquitous observation and judgement of all people, because they thought that would make it easier to control people's behavior. But also someone pointed out that is what the anti-christ would do. In the end there wasn't any real consensus on whether or not mass surveillance was good or bad.

Did the church group not already believe there to be an entity capable of ubiquitous observation and judgement of everyone, that as an added bonus happens to be entirely benevolent? I'm not sure how any human-made competition in this department could be beneficial.

This is indeed a big paradox in organized religions.

When I was young my parents wanted me to learn about religions so I could make my own choice about which to follow. But I was constantly like "wtf how does this make sense???". And disruptive in class :) They had to take me out of Sunday school.

Another thing I never understood is predestination in calvinist religions, which are big in Holland. They believe it's already decided whether you go to heaven or hell, regardless of your actions during your life.

So how would you live your life? Personally I'd go for maximum enjoyment because whatever happens is already decided. But no, they're very strict and regimental in general. Never understood why. But of course I did only have Sunday school for a short while :)

> Another thing I never understood is predestination in calvinist religions, which are big in Holland. They believe it's already decided whether you go to heaven or hell, regardless of your actions during your life.

> So how would you live your life? Personally I'd go for maximum enjoyment because whatever happens is already decided. But no, they're very strict and regimental in general. Never understood why. But of course I did only have Sunday school for a short while :)

I heard about the predestination thing well before I heard of Newcomb's paradox, but now I realise this is basically the same as "one box, or both boxes?"

That's terrifying that people thought it was potentially good

Why do your fellow congregants want to control the behavior of others? Why can’t they just focus on their own lives and their own community instead of what other people outside of their community are doing?

I think they implied observing the behavior of fellow congregants not outsiders. Not sure if that makes it any better. But I think that’s what the poster meant.

That said it is definitely what any competent authoritarian would want.

This assumes quite a bit about the group. Is it wrong to discuss topics like this and share different views? Why do you want to control this groups private discussions?

I don't think the parent is controlling the discussion, or really even saying it's wrong to discuss this and share their views. But, by the same token, the parent is also allowed to express their concern about people who do hold these views here.

You are correct that I am making assumptions, I’m assuming this group wants to control the behaviors of people outside of their religious group which may not be the case.

I don’t want to control their discussion, it’s fine to discuss things and share different views. I want to understand why a group of people would welcome a panopticon because it would make people easier to control.

I agree it's a bit of a strange dialogue at church, but there is an emphasis on pius behavior both in public and private so I would guess this is the line of thinking they were going down. I would grant the other commenter that God doesn't need 6g to see you, if you believe in that.

Why should they control the behavior of people in their congregation? I associate controlling the members of your own community with cults.

Not OP, and I can only speak for the circles I grew up in, but some churches are full of deeply traumatized people. I think some of the authoritarian tendencies have roots in a deep desire/need to regain some kind of feeling of control in their lives, and here’s this group of people that meets every week who provides a level of comfort and community while offering a gospel that can both satisfy that need while making people feel righteous in the process.

I don’t want to doxx myself so I’ll keep the details vague, but both of my parents came from disturbing environments and were subject to things that would universally be understood as deeply traumatic. I think they’re good people, but very very confused, and their fundamentalism was a product of the degree of unresolved trauma/dysfunction in their lives and their need to impose some kind of order on their circumstances.

Not all churches look this way. Mine sure did. Almost everyone had a story. Thankfully I escaped the bubble. But not without consequence. Through no fault of my own, I was indoctrinated into a belief system that I then had to spend decades and counting unwinding and unlearning. I mention this because a lot of people want to focus on other people’s lives because that’s what they were taught to do. People were born into beliefs they didn’t choose.

None of which is to excuse the behavior. But I’ve seen up close where it comes from.

Thanks for sharing your story. Mine is similar. Always interesting to see someone else take this life path.

It’s an interesting path for sure. I’d never wish it on anyone, but the experience has also been useful in its own way.

Email me if you ever want to chat about this stuff.

You may not be paying attention. A decent slice of the population wants the government to control everything, all of the time. These people are all around you, all of the time, no matter where you are.

Last time it was the end of the Aries age, when Nero played the role of the antichrist. Today we're approaching the of the end of the Pisces' age, and Nero 2.0, fixed and engrossed, will be equipped with brain reading devices (the future of neuralink), machine intelligence and human-like machines. Thinking in private will be possible only at the abstract level, as all the internal monologue will be carefully recorded and analyzed. He will rise to power on the wings of nihilist technocrats, and will institute the law for those who want to be free, and freedom for those who want to be free from the law.

US govt and military give a lot of money to Nokia

Nokia has NSA rooms in their R&D offices. It's creepy.

What's even creepier is that parent company also owns Github.

Microsoft?

ahh, the golden days when the smartphones that mattered ran Symbian and we thought Elop was going to be our Elon.

N900 ran linux and it mattered

Microsoft purchased Nokia's Devices & Services division, and rebranded it as Microsoft Mobile. Nokia then pivoted to telecommunications infrastructure and IoT. So there's no longer a relationship between the two companies.

Also, the Nokia smartphone brand is licensed to HMD Global.

Yeah someone at Microsoft thought they could get Windows CE to run on the popular Nokia 3210. /s

They revealed that publicly? (Do you work for Nokia? (or the NSA?))

If he does, he probably does not anymore.

I think it's a misunderstanding. I found a couple of articles mentioning both Nokia and NSA, but here NSA stands for "Non-Standalone 5G network".

Here's a press release, for example: Nokia selected by Dedicado for 5G NSA network in Uruguay (https://www.nokia.com/about-us/news/releases/2022/12/08/noki...)

And a Linkedin profile (he must have a room in the office): Yuriy Pavlov - NSA Infrastructure Information Systems Manager. Nokia. (https://www.linkedin.com/in/yuriy-pavlov-1969904)

My understanding is that the 3D imaging is somewhat inherent to how the protocol operates: higher frequency data over a wider band of frequencies means they can locate you more precisely.

Cell phone network operators need to know your location in order to route traffic to the correct tower in order to reach you, and that is not changing anytime soon. Same principle for WiFi beamforming.

I had an app that ran on Android about a decade ago, which let the user ignore some of the cell masts, so you could not be triangulated, it let you stick to just communicating with the cell mast of your choice.

Dont know if its still around.

Not just to the correct tower, but also for adaptive beamforming.

> Cell phone network operators need to know your location in order to route traffic to the correct tower in order to reach you, and that is not changing anytime soon.

But that's obviously false. They can know which tower to route your traffic to by the simple fact that that's where your traffic came from.

They know where you are because you broadcast simultaneously to all of their towers, but that's not something they need.

That assumes a stationary target. As cell sizes shrink due to higher frequencies, the need to anticipate where you are and where you're going goes up.

It's deeper than that. You can't have advanced communications without gleaning the information needed to form a 3D image.

To get maximum data throughput, modern communications systems measure how the channel (ie. environment) changes the radio signals and then reverses those changes in the receiver. (search term: channel estimation). So it's inherent that a modern communications system is modelling its environment. A primary way communications systems become better is to increase the sophistication of their environment model.

Once the model becomes sophisticated enough, the only difference between a radar and a communication system is which information you choose to extract: the information the environment imprinted/modulated on the radio signal/carrier (ie. the model of the environment) or the information the transmitter imprinted/modulated on the radio signal/carrier (ie. the message). The first is radar, the second is communications. There is no technical reason why you can't extract both.

This is not a technical question but a moral one in the face of such surveillance apparatuses as exist today.

A pen can be both a writing implement and a deadly weapon. But until someone decides to use it as a deadly weapon, it's not one. Luckily we don't typically hear people explaining the anatomy of soft tissues in the human neck when talking about pens.

Agree. Hence the qualification that there is no technical reason why the information can't be extracted. Any barriers are non-technical.

The problem is that this information is inherent to a communications system. It can't be separated. Communications is pervasive, so channel information is pervasive. How does one control something that is pervasive?

It's a Catch-22: Do we implement a surveillance apparatus to prevent people from accessing the channel information that can be used to build a surveillance apparatus?

> Do we implement a surveillance apparatus to prevent people from accessing the channel information

thats the wrong question - simply remove all barriers that prevent consuners from inspecting inner working if their devices, and attach large statutory compensation in case a consumer privacy is violated.

Except you can't mass kill people with pens. Or you can't hijack someone else's pen and kill them. You can mass surveil people with this tech and you can be sure it will be used that way sooner or later.

Sooner, most likely.

Killing people isn't a typical side-effect of normal usage of pen, unless you want to go into comparing might with swords.

Well, because it is a feature. It's really cool and I already have ideas for projects I want to do with it. An omnidirectional way to map an entire space that doesn't have the limitations of or require cameras is incredible. And one that I can potentially use to map myself as I walk around. It's basically the end game of motion controls.

The popularity will explode the moment someone makes a commercial where someone is cooking with something messy and using their phone without ever touching it.

It's the people who make or break it. "This technology is too dangerous and must be destroyed, but hold on I need to use it first because it's really useful" doesn't feel like the strongest condemnation.

The only result will be that the router of my neighbor, provided by his ISP, will happily reports the inside of my apartment. Sorry, I can be excited for a radar-based controller for a console, but as part of wifi, I can't really find any legit use

I, maybe naively, assumed this capability will also comes to handhelds but yeah if it's only for stationary APs then it's kinda lame.

Beamforming around moving (or even static) obstacles? Integrated motion sensing with fewer false positives for smart bulbs, doorbells, whatever? Or more realistically, your TV can make sure you don't skip the commercials. I probably wouldn't use that stuff myself either, but it's interesting to think about.

Why would I care that my neighbor knows we're home and moving around? If they really wanna creep on us, they can already use IR cameras or audio amplification or laser mics or whatever.

> If they really wanna creep on us, they can already use IR cameras or audio amplification or laser mics or whatever.

There's always a more sophisticated way to do something bad. Why would that be a good reason to lower the bar for doing it?

This is the first time I've seen someone use this question in defense of privacy, instead of against it.

Walls of homes are usually insulated enough to make an IR camera useless unless it's inside the home. It would be good for identifying cracks that heat can seap through though. Surveillance by laser microphones can easily be mitigated by curtains or blinds. Both of those also require the person spying to intentionally use them to spy. There is no legal commercial device that could prevent your neighbor's Xfinity Hotspot from selling what you do in your own home to Facebook/Google to use to target you with ads.

It would come off as a bit paranoid, but chicken wire would block wifi signals.

It is commonly used for older plastered facades. Maybe there will be a resurgence.

It’s used for stucco as well, which is everywhere.

surveillance into private places is illegal. you can't film in someone's window, you can't wifi vision through someones walls. whether or not that is prevented from happening by manufacturers and that the law is enforced depends on a lot of things

You can take infrared photos currently of someone's house and use that in court

with a warrant many kinds of search are possible. in normal circumstances, that's illegal

The problem is not that you can buy a device that does this. The problem is that they'll put it in devices you can't easily avoid buying, don't control the firmware of or which have an abominable security record.

It's fine if I can take live 3D radar images of the inside of my bedroom. Not fine if someone else can.

It's not just Nokia, basically everyone working on 6G proposoals is working on this under the name joint communication and sensing.

Its interesting that any time where someone can gather some form of data is now labeled as "privacy invasion"

Which makes the whole discussion about privacy a joke because nobody can define what privacy is.

> Its interesting that any time where someone can gather some form of data is now labeled as "privacy invasion"

.... I think technology that enables visualization through walls is pretty obviously a privacy invasion. People are used to walls giving them privacy...

IR cameras existed for quite some time. You can also locate people through walls with sound.

Simply by going about your day you publish metadata about yourself that can be used to derive behavior.