The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

https://staceyoniot.com/the-next-big-wi-fi-standard-is-for-sensing-not-communication/

by transpute • 5 years ago

205 218 5 years ago

giantg26• 5 years ago

I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old. It seems this, like a lot of new tech these days, will end up offering little benefit while providing new malicious capabilities.

C19is20• 5 years ago

It's been the same throughout history. Invent a tool...use it to kill.

oblio2• 5 years ago

I wouldn't be as negative.

Frequently we create the tool in order to kill with it.

After that we also use to tool to create.

We're equally capable of good and evil and yes, we are frequently good, too.

Lucasoato• 5 years ago

...also the other way: a lot of inventions were used in the civil world just after being designed and developed in the military one.

loceng2• 5 years ago

"Sticks and stones may break my bones ..."

ksec• 5 years ago

One thing I see 802.1bf ( Sensing ), along with 802.11be ( WiFi 7 ) could be used together in setting up consumer mesh WiFi Network. Home Wireless Networking is still pretty much an unsolved problem for average consumers.

Edit: Turns out there are other comments below mentioning this.

giantg26• 5 years ago

"Home Wireless Networking is still pretty much an unsolved problem for average consumers."

What do you mean? Most consumers have a wireless router, and that works for their needs.

JohnWhigham2• 5 years ago

It's very scary shit. We could soon have no privacy at all in our own homes because of other people's WiFi networks. If the output is strong enough, all you have to do is connect to/crack someone's WiFi and use it to get a layout of all their neighbor's places.

everdrive• 5 years ago

This is a great example of why people don’t have privacy. Ethernet cables exist, and wholly forgo these problems. But, they are less convenient. Consumers complain a lot about privacy, but do little to really demand it. Of course manufacturers deserve much of the blame here for actually implementing these things, but it doesn’t seem as if consumers are trying to steer them in the right direction at all.

transpute26• 5 years ago

all you have to do is connect to/crack someone's WiFi and use it to get a layout of all their neighbor's places.

It's much worse: neither crack nor connection is required. The technology is entirely passive, it only uses reflections from Wi-Fi radios, same as radar. No connection to the router is required, hence the acronym DFWS (Device-Free Wireless Sensing).

To be clear, this can be done today with $20 ESP32 WiFi devices + custom firmware, i.e. any motivated attacker can already see through the walls of homes and businesses. The Wi-Fi 7 Sensing draft standard is proposing to make this available to everyone.

Perhaps we need a celebrity to help demo SENS transparency of their home walls, to help consumers and regulators understand the implications. That could motivate research investment in privacy controls.

More details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901979

dragonelite• 5 years ago

There is a difference between consumer benefits and maybe industrial benefits. Maybe it might make communication between sorting bots more accurate and quicker.

giantg26• 5 years ago

Doubtful. Beam forming would be more beneficial.

transpute26• 5 years ago

(2010) early public firmware for research on Wi-Fi sensing, https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/

(2012) military use case, https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/seeing-thr...

(2017) industrial use case, https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/wi-fi-radiation-tran...

(2020) slide #20 on use cases for Wi-Fi 7 SENS, https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents...

(2021) HN threads on "seeing through walls" radar for human monitoring: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28479057 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493

(2021) IEEE working group, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14918.pdf

This paper reports ongoing efforts by the IEEE 802.11bf Task Group (TGbf), which is defining the appropriate modifications to existing Wi-Fi standards to enhance sensing capabilities through 802.11-compliant waveforms.

(2021) panel discussion on RF sensing, https://staceyoniot.com/what-you-missed-at-the-rf-sensing-ev...

we could use terahertz spectrum to detect specific molecules and in turn use terahertz frequencies and radios as a way to track specific ingredients in food or pollutants in the air.

(2021) EU-funded CSI countermeasures research in privacy protection, https://ans.unibs.it/projects/csi-murder/

(2022) product launch ahead of the 2024 standard, https://www.theverge.com/2022/1/3/22864783/sengled-smart-hea...

The Sengled Smart Health Monitoring Light is a dual Wi-Fi / Bluetooth bulb with built-in health monitoring using radar technology. It’s designed to track your sleep and certain biometric measurements, such as heart rate and body temperature, as well as other vital signs. The bulb can work alone, or multiple bulbs connected via a Bluetooth mesh network work together to create a virtual map that can help detect human behavior.

kadoban2• 5 years ago

Who is actually asking for this? It can't be for consumers just wanting to use the internet right? I don't get it.

zozbot234• 5 years ago

It's most probably meant for opportunistic sensing in industrial environments, where it might become quite useful. It's not something you're going to use at home.

trulyme• 5 years ago

However, it could be something employers would want to use when you are working remotely. Unfortunately.

varenc• 5 years ago

I think there’ll be a decent amount of home interest, particularly for home security. Linksys is already doing WiFi sensing as part of their various smart home products: https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=317804

The Linksys docs even mention how you may have to tune the sensitivity to filter out motion from your neighbors...

transpute26• 5 years ago

Since this is passive sensing, an attacker outside your home can make use of the WiFi signals emitted from the router inside your home. Or they can broadcast their own signal.

transpute26• 5 years ago

https://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents...

  Security
  Environment Control
  Wake on approach, walk away lock
  Conference room occupancy
  Gesture control
  Elderly monitoring
  Baby monitoring
  Smart housekeeping
  Advertisement signage efficiency
  Motion detection
  Proximity detection
  People counting
  Human activity recognition
  Vital signs (e.g. heartrate) detection

darkwater• 5 years ago

Advertisement signage efficiency

Here we go

lifeisstillgood2• 5 years ago

The big one is "heartbeat detection".

"Tactical suggests there are 14 heartbeats in the room"

"During the interview the candidates heart rate increased during questions on their reasons for leaving the last position"

ohhh. There is sooo much here :-)

barbazoo2• 5 years ago

The only real practical example is fall detection, what's the real purpose of this?

ryan93• 5 years ago

Kept a lot of smart students busy

freyr• 5 years ago

I worked briefly for a company working on WiFi sensing, and besides fall detection, nobody could give a compelling use case.

When pressed to come up with a motivating vision, the big idea was lights turning on automatically when you enter a room.

I guess? Like a lot of R&D, it seemed a solution in search of a problem.

cpuguy83• 5 years ago

Yeah seemed like a replacement for other motion sensing... but then how localized can this actually be?

wildzzz• 5 years ago

They've been making that tech for years, every office and school classroom I've been to in the last 10 years has that now. This is just another stupid shot in the dark. Maybe someday someone will actually find a useful purpose. We are limited by what we can't even imagine so there's always hope but until then, I'll let those with deep pockets spend the energy trying to find a good use for it.

saltminer• 5 years ago

lights turning on automatically when you enter a room

Was this really it? Or did they have some use-case not currently covered by motion sensors?

I can see some potential use for security (cheap REX sensors can be easily tricked, allowing unauthorized access into secure areas). The fix is obvious (stop cheaping out on your REX sensors) but I can envision someone trying to bill wifi sensing as the hip new solution for REX systems.

electric_mayhem• 5 years ago

Mass surveillance. Only through warrants, of course.

Or, you know, if a cop wants to stalk their ex-gf, or an isp tech support nerd wants to stalk a customer. Or any script kiddie or petty criminal can get hold of your wifi password or drop his own AP in your house.

Nothing to see here. I mean, what could possibly go wrong?

computerfriend• 5 years ago

A lot of the active research in this area was military funded.

elric• 5 years ago

I've long had an obsession with energy savings and heating, and I think the best way to save energy on heating is by heating people instead of building. With accurate person detection in a room, you could shine low intensity IR at their exact position to keep them warm without wasting energy on heating the rest of the room.

But yeah, I think we can all expect this will be used to monitor behaviour in stores, to spy on people in homes, to rob us and to throw more "relevant" advertising in our faces.

EricE5• 5 years ago

"you could shine low intensity IR at their exact position to keep them warm without wasting energy on heating the rest of the room."

brings new meaning to beam forming! I like it.

hffftz• 5 years ago

Check if anyone is home before a robery ?

humaniania• 5 years ago

Saving lives isn't good enough for you?

dafoex2• 5 years ago

Then make a dedicated fall detector and sell it to the elderly. They already make wrist bands with panic buttons that phone for help, put the sensor in the phone hub just in case they fall and lose consciousness.

DoingIsLearning2• 5 years ago

This gave me 'think of the children' gaslighting vibes.

ClumsyPilot5• 5 years ago

I am sure the invisible hand of the market will make sure it's put to best possible use :)

Ginden5• 5 years ago

The only real practical example is fall detection, what's the real purpose of this?

I can think of few real world applications. Eg. I have autism and air filter. Air filter working on full power is very uncomfortable for me, but with position sensing, it can be configured to run more often when I'm not in room. Motion sensing isn't exactly a solution, because I can be very still.

Automated light management is sensible too. It can also be used to automatically turn off lights if I fall asleep.

barbazoo2• 5 years ago

That sounds useful in your case, thanks for sharing.

GlenTheMachine• 5 years ago

Is it just me, or does this seems like a really, really bad idea? The privacy implications here seem… disturbing.

whatshisface3• 5 years ago

Technology can't be stopped by individual engineers refusing to invent it, it can only be stopped by everyone agreeing on the ways it shouldn't be used. So it was for arson (fire), homicide (every weapon since the rock), and obscene material (all communications technology), and so must it be for privacy and the various techniques of monitoring us.

pjbeam• 5 years ago

Even then it isn't stopped; once something exists someone will eventually use it, and likely in way not intended by the designer.

transpute26• 5 years ago

Since 802.11bf makes most existing walls transparent, it should lead to innovation in wall construction.

It may also increase market demand for light-based wireless networking (Li-Fi) which has the advantage of being stopped by existing walls.

Gigachad• 5 years ago

I think future home privacy will go beyond blinds. We will be lining the walls in RF blocking sheets.

transpute26• 5 years ago

RF shielding materials: https://mpkb.org/home/special/emf/protective_materials & https://www.eiwellspring.org/shielding.html

QuietRock 530RF drywall will block sound and RF, https://www.buildsite.com/pdf/pabcogypsum/QuietRock-530-Inst...

eunoia• 5 years ago

Honest question: is wrapping a home in a Faraday cage even plausible?

Or on a room level? How do you control for RF leaks? How do you handle windows and doorways?

I’m fascinated.

bluGill5• 5 years ago

It isn't just you, but it should be. The privacy implications are potentially disturbing and need to be address (I have no idea how). However there are also a lot of real uses for this that will make your life better. Some of those are things we haven't thought of yet.

lexicality• 5 years ago

What sort of real uses?

jacob019• 5 years ago

Will be great for making targeted interactive ads that follow customers around as they shop.

waynesonfire• 5 years ago

Meh,not even web3.0 compatible. Very disappointing.

divbzero• 5 years ago

Some WiFi systems [1] [2] already offer sensing capabilities for home security.

[1] https://www.linksys.com/us/support-article?articleNum=317804

[2] https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20171114005542/en/Nex...

I agree with other comments that question the ratio of benefit vs. risk. But I’m an old fogey who feels similarly about other “smart” home devices.

transpute26• 5 years ago

Also possible with open firmware on low-cost ESP32 devices, https://wrlab.github.io/Wi-ESP/ & https://github.com/StevenMHernandez/ESP32-CSI-Tool

But there's a big difference in custom firmware used in a few products and IEEE standardization in every new WiFi access point.

We need more funding for countermeasures, https://ans.unibs.it/projects/csi-murder/

Imagine that someone wants to illegally track the position of a person inside a laboratory, for instance to measure how much time is spent doing different activities at different desks, as depicted in the upper picture. How much effective can this attack be? ... With CSI-MURDER, the localization becomes impossible because results will seem random, thus preserving the person privacy without destroying Wi-Fi communications.

400+ (!) papers on wireless sensing, over the last decade https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/ & https://groups.csail.mit.edu/netmit/sFFT/soda_paper.pdf & https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/103715

deadmutex• 5 years ago

other comments that question the ratio of benefit vs. risk

I think it is important to note that different people will have different inputs into benefits and risk. E.g. a 24 year old male living alone probably doesn't have a use case for elderly fall detection, etc. But, a 75 year old woman living alone probably does.

Also, I am of the opinion that is possible to do this properly (i.e. securely and privacy preserving). Case in point: people carry microphones (in phones) that can record any audio with them... but they do it because they trust that their phone is secure and private.

vlovich123• 5 years ago

How much additional value does this provide vs the addition of ToF information in beacons that already exists?

This seems primarily about providing tracking capabilities to operators whereas ToF provides tracking to the people who are actually trying to do positioning. The privacy implications are worrying.

jimmySixDOF• 5 years ago

In a related note, this week Google ATAP and Ford announced Ripple, a open standard for consumer radio sensing based on Project Soli (60 Ghz)

[1] https://github.com/CTA-Ripple/Ripple-v.0

[2] https://9to5google.com/2022/01/06/google-soli-radar-ripple/

transpute26• 5 years ago

That's based on UWB (Ultra Wideband), which is also present in some iPhones.

https://staceyoniot.com/two-companies-show-where-our-uwb-fut...

Outside of fine-grained location tracking, UWB is also used for radar sensing. Google is using UWB for its Soli radar, which is embedded in the most recent Nest Hub display to track respiration during sleep ... Novelda, argues that UWB sensing is more effective than the traditional motion sensors that hotels have historically deployed because they can sense a person even when they are still by “seeing” micromovements made by the person’s breathing. Lenovo embedded the Novelda chip into its laptops as a way to keep the screen on only when a person is in front of it, which helps save on battery power.

ahonhn• 5 years ago

Finally! X-Ray glasses like what the ads in the comic book promised!

transpute26• 5 years ago

Thanks, MIT! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dina_Katabi

In 2012, her work on Sparse Fourier Transforms was chosen as one of the top 10 breakthroughs of the year by Technology Review ... In 2014, on the celebration of Project Mac's 50th anniversary, her work on X-ray vision was chosen as one of the "50 ways that MIT has transformed computer science."

petarb• 5 years ago

I want my Wi-Fi to deliver me fast internet access, not track my position. Have a feeling this will be used for il-intent and monetized by future routers

Haemm0r• 5 years ago

As many APs today are already cloud dependent I can totally see where all the sensed data will be stored and out of the owners control.

SV_BubbleTime• 5 years ago

I’m skeptical there are customers really asking for this.

charcircuit2• 5 years ago

How would this be useful? Collecting the average distance away from an access point someone uses their phone or whatever?

charcircuit2• 5 years ago

But tracking your position allows it to give you fast internet access.

transpute26• 5 years ago

How does beamforming position granularity correlate with speed?

selfhoster114• 5 years ago

I don't need more than a few hundred megabits on the go, thank you very much. If I want to go faster, and Ethernet cable is always a faster solution with less moving parts.

fsflover2• 5 years ago

In this case you may want to use a router based on free software: https://ryf.fsf.org/categories/routers.

slmjkdbtl• 5 years ago

What are you talking about, providing you fast internet access doesn't maximize the benefit for me and my shareholders. We need your exact location, eye movement, and heart rate every second so we can do better invasive target advertisements, or sell these to other companies.

thegagne• 5 years ago

Not mentioned in the article but a futuristic guess would be to provide omniscient eyes for AI/robots.

Short term smart bots that can navigate and clean a cluttered household with little kids and toddlers knocking about.

Longer term, maybe nanobots.

It could be Rosie from the Jetsons but more likely it’s Amazon analyzing my poop density to sell me some goofball supplements.

transpute26• 5 years ago

Terahertz-radar doorbell breathalyzer virus test decides whether to smart unlock front door to allow leaving the house?

Philip K. Dick would be proud.

kornhole• 5 years ago

This could inspire some clothing designs that weave in rf blocking or distorting materials to wear in retail or work places.

whatshisface3• 5 years ago

That would be like hiding from cameras by wearing a bright orange reflective vest.

KingMachiavelli• 5 years ago

There seems to be a lot of FUD about this. Make no mistake, the malicious and privacy invasive applications are already being used; they just don't follow a IEEE spec and aren't associated with WiFi directly.

If a maliciously controlled router wants to track you it already can because your phone, smart watch, and laptop already broadcast themselves.

This technology may not seem useful to the purpose of WiFi on it's face but that couldn't be further from the truth. Knowing the population of a room in terms of devices but also people is useful for WiFi deployment planning and power level optimization. 2000 people with 2 devices is different from 4000 individual people.

People already have WiFi enabled lights and other sensors so providing a standard for object & people detection will make those use cases even better.

leoh• 5 years ago

So there’s FUD about something we should already reasonably have FUD about?

lifeisstillgood2• 5 years ago

When analysing FUD always use the ELMER acronym

E - Expectations

L - Lifetime

M - Motivation

E - Environment

R - Reward

:-)

selfhoster114• 5 years ago

It's not FUD. There's nothing hypothetical about the danger.

judge20206• 5 years ago

The hypothetical in this is that this suddenly opens the door to RF-based physical sensing, when every attacker that can gain from this is already using it, just via custom equipment.

JohnWhigham2• 5 years ago

There was also a lot of FUD about what data the feds were collecting about the general public during the Bush era. Then the Snowden leaks happened.

EricE5• 5 years ago

People already have WiFi enabled lights and other sensors so providing a standard for object & people detection will make those use cases even better.

Yet another reason I prefer Zwave for my home automation communications. Sure you could probably use it in the same way, but it won't be handed to you on a silver platter like the wifi stuff discussed here!

nerdbaggy• 5 years ago

Cisco has been doing something like this with Angle of Arrival with a 16 antenna array for the past few years. It’s pretty cool but only works in perfect setups, and the antennas need to be mounted above you.

https://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/td/docs/wireless/controller/te...

Ice_cream_suit• 5 years ago

Nice...

SWAT teams, home burglars and the NSA will all be clients for the data.

Once the granularity gets fine enough, movements involved in prayers, sex and elimination of waste can all be monitored remotely by state actors.

Malware from around the world will now be able to transmit details of your body movements back to their controllers.

Imagine being able to blackmail you because malware detected you having sex when your partner was away or performing Muslim prayers in an islamophobic society.

visarga• 5 years ago

Hmm, this is what I imagined: https://static01.nyt.com/images/2013/07/21/books/review/0721...

skocznymroczny• 5 years ago

Just put it under "contact tracing and covid prevention" and people will cheer you for it and ask for more.

jagger275• 5 years ago

I'm surprised that there's not a single comment here about 802.11ay which is also 60GHz. Each channel on that standard can do something like 40Gbps, which is nuts. From Wikipedia[0]:

The link-rate per stream is 44 Gbit/s, with four streams this goes up to 176 Gbit/s.

Yes, it can't penetrate walls, but is huge for point to point communication. Think VR headset bandwidth, file transfers between devices, wireless backhaul between buildings. It's not just for spying on your cat.

I think it's important to remember that it's not magic, it's just radio waves. You can "sense" with a lot more resolution if you use a camera and light bulb. There are plenty of eyeballs, cameras, and lights all around you right now. Even worse, someone could be looking in your window with binoculars.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ay

zinekeller• 5 years ago

You can "sense" with a lot more resolution if you use a camera and light bulb.

(Visible) Light has a frequency of around 400-790 THz, which explains why it has a inherently better resolution.

jagger275• 5 years ago

Yep!

transpute26• 5 years ago

https://www.rtinsights.com/li-fi-a-new-wireless-alternative-...

Li-Fi connections are broadcast over the air through a light-emitting diodes (LED) broadcaster and support rates up to 100Gbit/s ... Li-Fi can also serve to identify an object’s indoor position more accurately than Wi-Fi or GPS used today (less than 2cm and less than 3 degrees of orientation while it is providing real-time localization (less than 34ms). This accuracy is vital in multiple applications such as navigation In-Door Robots and Drones, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), and Gaming, among others ... it cannot go through walls, and thus a private local area network (LAN) can be created by lighting up a closed room ... Any organization that needs to keep information within the four walls, such as military bases and banks, can use the technology to keep data restricted to a single room.

_trampeltier• 5 years ago

Yes and no. So you have to have a cable again to every room (for the AP), because the wifi signal can't go thru walls?

I hope then you can dissable the lower frequencys, because now you have 5 or more APs in your appartement.

mulmen2• 5 years ago

So if I don’t want anyone taking a WiFi “photo” of me on the throne I should put up aluminum foil curtains?

ackbar03• 5 years ago

Wear a tin foil hat. And take a photo of yourself anyways cause a guy on the throne with a tin foil hat on sounds hilarious

EMM_386• 5 years ago

Watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrxWiU_v9Qs

zeepzeep• 5 years ago

It's not just for spying on your cat.

Can we stop downplaying privacy issues please?

EveYoung• 5 years ago

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

bluGill5• 5 years ago

Sure, can privacy advocates stop down playing what we lose because we value privacy though?

There needs to be a balance, location information will be very useful for a lot of things, but only if we have it fully implemented. I want things to sense when I fall and call for help for me. (If I was at a big risk I'd have a button, but for the average young person the risk is non-zero but very small). I want my home automation stuff to figure out where they are and configure themselves. I want my routers to suggest that I'd get better coverage by moving it.

Yes there is privacy concerns and they need to be addressed, but don't lose the good with it.

kingcharles2• 5 years ago

Clearly you've not met my cat.

tagoregrtst2• 5 years ago

I cant see through walls with a lightbulb. I can with wifi.

This standard makes my wifi router into an internet connected, closed source blob, light bulb and camera that is impossible to obscure (without killing my internet connection).

Sure, I can wire my whole house for ethernet. And, while I’m behind the drywall, I might as well rip off all the drywall put a layer of Al.

Here’s a business idea - drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router.

EDIT: made wifi’s ability to see through walls explicit per _jal’s comment.

transpute26• 5 years ago

drywall with aluminum fibers embedded

QuietRock has drywall that combines soundproofing with RF shielding (steel plate), but it's expensive and targeted at military use cases, https://www.quietrock.com/sites/default/files/QuietRock_530R.... Aluminum radiant barrier can be layered with standard drywall.

There is conductive carbon paint for RF shielding, e.g. http://www.emfrf.com/shielding-of-electric-fields-in-a-resid... & https://www.zokazola.com/emf_reduction.html

Other materials: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29902926

_jal• 5 years ago

To put a slightly finer point on it, I can't see through your walls with my lightbulb, but I probably can see through your walls with my router.

Your creepy neighbor in the apartment next door is getting a new toy.

pizza3• 5 years ago

Another idea in the opposite direction: somebody should build a $20 firewall/tappable ethernet cable with some kind of builtin eBPF support + a universe of community packages.

The community would then share privacy-enhancing I/O profiles for every kind of device. If years later e.g. my adversarial lightbulb pivots to brokering kompromat SIGINT, I want to filter that out, and I want not to be the first one to write a filter like that..

Does it change the internal state of the lightbulb’s logic? No.. but hopefully it would even be able to simulate the state loop of the lightbulb well enough to guess what to filter out.

Of course there may also come a time when somebody starts to sell $20, 60 ghz-spectrum-only-visible “human activity fakers” to disrupt the collection of such data. Maybe with a “Honey, I’m home!” package being the most popular, lol

bigbillheck• 5 years ago

drywall with aluminum fibers embedded in. For those of us who don't want our sexy times recorded by our router.

The ancients had a solution for this (brick walls).

throwawayForMe2• 5 years ago

Along with plaster-and-lathe there was also plaster on a wire mesh. Old houses with these kind of plaster walls get terrible cell phone reception.

akomtu• 5 years ago

This is the natural evolution of ultrasound radars, currently present in some devices.

transpute26• 5 years ago

(2021) privacy comments on Wi-Fi 7 standards work for 802.11bf, https://arxiv.org/pdf/2103.14918.pdf

it has been shown that SENS-based classifiers can infer privacy-critical information such as keyboard typing, gesture recognition and activity tracking ... since Wi-Fi signals can penetrate hard objects and can be used without the presence of light, end-users may not even realize they are being tracked ... individuals should be provided the opportunity to opt out of SENS services – in other words, to avoid being monitored and tracked by the Wi-Fi devices around them. This would require the widespread introduction of reliable SENS algorithm for human or animal identification.

Would this require a worldwide database of biometric signatures for each human that opts out?

klabb32• 5 years ago

No, the future is decentralized. In the US, you will always be tracked because of regulatory capture of the FCC. In Europe, your phone will display a tracking consent pop-up everytime you go into a cafe. If you don't comply, you will have to get your coffee and free wifi elsewhere.

ClumsyPilot5• 5 years ago

I can no longer tell apart sarcasm and real dystopia

wizzwizz4• 5 years ago

If you don't comply, you will have to get your coffee and free wifi elsewhere.

You will be able to take legal action against the café, but it won't make a difference.

judge20206• 5 years ago

My concern is that people opting out of this protocol won't actually be opting out of the sensing technology. Any attacker trying to sense keystrokes using RF waves already can do that and won't be hindered by some opt out program nor be considered whether or not wifi 7 sensing is allowed to be part of new routers.

layla5alive• 5 years ago

This has nearly zero non-orwellian use-cases inside a home.

beebeepka• 5 years ago

Of course there are all sorts of positive applications for the user. It's just their number is dwarfed by the real purpose of these things. We've known they've been coming for a while. Now they here and we'll have to fight it, then lose.

bluGill5• 5 years ago

You have no idea what the future will come up with. There is a lot of potential on both sides.

dirtyid• 5 years ago

I expected wifi sensing to be exploited when I saw the tech demo years ago but I did not expect it to become a standard.

hoseja• 5 years ago

Please dance the Amazon Verification Dance.

I cannot fathom any good use for this technology.

rocqua• 5 years ago

Adaptive ventilation and maybe even heating of rooms depending on the number of people present.

DoingIsLearning2• 5 years ago

You can add a 100 euro CO2 sensor to control your HVAC.

There isn't a use case for this that isn't abusive outside an industrial setting.

I think if ISPs push for these in routers we will see comeback of rewiring houses with ethernet points.

selfhoster114• 5 years ago

There are far less invasive ways to do so. Like, for example, an IR sensor.

InsomniacL• 5 years ago

- Automatically alert emergency services to cardiac arrest - Health monitoring - intrusion detection - gesture control

pazimzadeh• 5 years ago

Do smell next.

neonihil• 5 years ago

I see a nice niche market opening for devices that scramble this kind of spatial detection.

Co-founders are welcome to contact me.

qwertox3• 5 years ago

This is not a future I'd like to see. What bothers me even more, is that if the neighbors above me decide to join an "Apple Security Sensing Program" by toggling it on, it may as well be sensing and logging my activity.

Other than that, I do have a lot of ESP32s at my place sensing for activity via IR as well as by creating an FFT-"audio" log. No sound just FFT aggregated over one second, but all these devices store the data on my home server, not in some cloud.

thebeastie• 5 years ago

Tell us more about the home sensors why ir? And what is the fft data for?

lnsru• 5 years ago

I feed fft data into machine learning system for signal classification. It’s a nice real time system with midrange Xilinx ZynQ SoC. Some Xilinx IP blocks with hand written classification engine.

I guess author wants to classify sounds in his environment too.

hdjjhhvvhga3• 5 years ago

I remember when first contactless payment options appeared, many people started buying anti-RFID wallets and bags. I'm not sure if they're still a thing, but the people who need "radio-privacy" will definitely find a way.

dafoex2• 5 years ago

I have a few wallets with alleged RFID blocking. For those its mainly to stop arse grabbing attacks where card info (or security badge info) could be cloned with a little badge reader held in someone's palm.

Ginden5• 5 years ago

What bothers me even more, is that if the neighbors above me decide to join an "Apple Security Sensing Program" by toggling it on, it may as well be sensing and logging my activity.

60 Ghz is heavily blocked by walls, glass and doors, even more than 5Ghz, so that's very unlikely scenario.

transpute26• 5 years ago

that's very unlikely scenario.

Wi-Fi sensing works with 2.4 Ghz and higher.

cblconfederate• 5 years ago

This is great because, finally we can start selling ads with verified "proximal views" to advertisers and make more money! In fact we can think of all the wonderful product synergies here. For example, we can increase the number of proximal views by automatically locking the smart lock in their room so they can't get out for the duration of the ad. Or we can lock the doors of our smart cars while the ads are playing, that's up to 6 verified viewers all at once! We can have ad screen on toilet stalls that autoplay when someone s(h)its. Your phone can start playing ads whenever you come near it! The possibilities here are endless

pmontra• 5 years ago

There is some previous work dating back at least to 2015. They were detecting people and gestures using current WiFi technologies.

http://rfcapture.csail.mit.edu/

sydthrowaway• 5 years ago

Sounds like a coup for Cognitive

marstall• 5 years ago

can someone who knows more than me speak to the GDPR (European privacy law) implications of a technology like this?

sandos• 5 years ago

I need this, room occupancy is still not a cleanly solved problem for home automation. Most methods relies on BLE or phone wifi but that sucks in many ways.

This is awesome!

r1ch• 5 years ago

Wouldn't this have to be constantly transmitting to work? I can't imagine the amount of interference this would create. The lower frequencies are already congested enough...

bluGill5• 5 years ago

your access point is transmitting beacons on a regular basis anyway.

transpute26• 5 years ago

It uses reflections from existing transmissions.

transpute26• 5 years ago

Thanks to the person who posted this comment on the article, https://staceyoniot.com/the-next-big-wi-fi-standard-is-for-s...

Great article. To get out ahead of this, I’ll go ahead and pre-write this for the IEEE. They’re going to need it in a few months.
“The IEEE has heard the concerns of consumers and takes privacy very seriously. We recognize that the potential value of the proposed standard is enormous, but that it must be paired with technologies that prevent it’s misuse in an ever more dangerous cyber world. As such, we are delaying the implementation of this technology in the .bf standard, and we will re-address it once we have come to a consensus across all stakeholders including privacy and consumer advocates.”

Jimmc414• 5 years ago

This could easily fall within the realm of the Supreme Court's decision in KYLLO v. UNITED STATES where it was ruled that a thermal imaging search of a home is a violation of the US 4th amendment.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/conlaw/kyllo.h...

EricE5• 5 years ago

As we know, outlawing activities is a sure-fire way to prevent them from happening!

riddleronroof3• 5 years ago

Your next door neighbor’s wifi will know your every movement, and can probably image it too. End of privacy within closed doors. I guess I always thought that should be sacred space.

blurbleblurble• 5 years ago

And just what do people think 5G is for?

I've been frustratedly trying to tell people this for a few years now. Glad it's finally "coming to light".

^^^ this pun has something to do with electromagnetic radiation

The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)

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