The reason the FCC is only allowing the sale of state approved routers in the US?

  • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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    2 months ago

    “Oh my goodness, this is a nightmare” typed everyone into their government approved location recording devices that can show them cats and boobs.

    • skibidi@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That would prevent cell signals from inside, making it harder to (e.g.) call the fire department, or an ambulance.

        • 4am@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          WiFi calling will make a direct beacon to follow, as any other WiFi use would. Faraday cages would block WiFi calling, as with any other signal.

          I think these techniques can use the reflection of the signal from the AP’s own transmissions, no additional devices needed.

          • cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de
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            2 months ago

            The Faraday cage will keep the WiFi signals inside the building. Nobody will be able to track you from outside and your own trusted devices will work fine inside. Just don’t bring any untrusted WiFi devices inside the Faraday cage.

    • wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz
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      2 months ago

      I’m wondering if some types of crystal can absorb or distort the signals enough to make you harder to identify. I mean I guess you’d be “that guy with the crystals in his pocket” and would be easy to correlate to CCTV flock, but if everyone does it it could create a layer of obscuration.

      Especially things with piezoelectric and/or electromagnetic effects. I’m thinking mainly along the lines of quartz, tourmaline, pyrite, tiger’s eye (hematite/jasper), shungite, etc.

      It would be worth experimenting with if anyone tries that open source software another commenter linked…

  • RegularJoe@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    “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/

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.

      • obviouspornalt@fedinsfw.app
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

      • Null User Object@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        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.

        • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.

    • morto@piefed.social
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      2 months ago

      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

      • mecen@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Or go to more civilized countries for vacation to get not backdoored hardware.

        • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
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          2 months ago

          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.

    • Melobol@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      That means “yesterday’s spy tech” that now they will leak to public, because they have a way better way.
      I’m not sure of the current state of my tinfoil hat.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The question with mandating US made routers may be either to protect citizens from foreign attacks - or to make sure every US router has a router with a government-approved backdoor.

    On which option would you bet?

  • TropicalDingdong@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    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.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yeah, if this shit hast to exist, at least let me use it for presence detection in Home Assistant without having to buy separate sensors or something!

      • village604@adultswim.fan
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        2 months ago

        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.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.

        • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

    • Tetsuo@jlai.lu
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      2 months ago

      Or an open source hardware device that changes your “wifi signature” randomly.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      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.

        • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          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.

          • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            my devices don’t, but unless I misunderstood it it does not matter whether you are connected to the neighbor’s router

    • hovercat@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      2 months ago

      I can tell you as someone who read the papers on very early deepfakes and AI video generation with amazement followed by dread, this is going to be feasible on a large scale in a short period of time. Researchers do stuff on an absolute shoestring budget usually, it’s incomparable to what large companies and governments have at their disposal. There are already consumer products that were able to become fairly precise motion sensors with just a firmware update. Next gen devices will be built with motion fingerprinting in mind, I can almost guarantee it.

    • brygphilomena@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      2 months ago

      It gets more accurate with more access points, too. So corporate and education settings will be the easy places for this to get implemented.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        I would expect them having access to that anyway when they control the device, or when they are the manufacturer

  • Deebster@infosec.pub
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    2 months ago

    I was watching a video the other day that was showing WiFi sensing using TOMMY which uses channel state information (CSI) - something this article describes as the previous approach. That was already quite impressive, although not nearly as powerful as this teaser hints at.

    We’ll have to wait for the hang on, the Taipei conference was last year so this is old news. Here’s the paper: https://publikationen.bibliothek.kit.edu/1000185756