Ironically, a tin foil hat would probably work to prevent that kind of surveillance
this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals
(www.theregister.com)
A faraday hat.
wouldn’t that make it worse? basically any signal can bounce off you, making yourself even easier to track.
edit: wording
The tracking happens even with a big reflector/scatterer on your head, but as long as you dont wear it regularly, the system would have difficulty identifying you from wave propagation alone
So wear many different hats. Got it.
I mean, wouldn't you anyway? You don't wear your good Sunday tinfoil hat to work. That one's for church and swinger club visits only!
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Many different items of tinfoil clothing. Tinfoil shirt today, tinfoil codpiece for the weekend
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Chuck vindicated. What a chicanery.
That's a very unique fingerprint he's got.
"Hey boss come look. This microwave is walking around again"
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.
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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
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Why would someone research something like this? God damn, like use your life for good, homie
Well I heard about this and thought "this will be great for home automation", but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.
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I can imagine this being initially an accidental discovery like oh every time so and so’s body interacts with the WiFi signal it’s the same pattern… until someone starts exploring this further… and then some engineer or their manager started looking for applications for this. In my experience engineering researchers especially are very good with coming up with use cases for whatever tech they’re working with, with little ethical consideration.
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Everything is incremental progress in some way.
I remember years back someone doing experiments with Wi-Fi to see if a room was occupied based on signal attenuation.
This just looks like an extension of that.
Not everything is a giant leap
You think if people who publish their work publicly didn't research things like this, they would just never be discovered?
At least this way, we all know about the possibility, and further research can be done to see what can mitigate it.
accurate matches up to 95.5% of the time
and they’re more privacy-preserving than visual images
Oh fuck all the way off.
My thought exactly. Their definition of privacy is... interesting
When anyone or anything says that their product works "up to x%" I always presume it doesn't really work at all.
Christ, 1% is included in that "up to 95.5%" vague bullshit statement.
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Incorrect bio-signature detected, drink verification can to continue your content.
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they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.
hhhhwat. How can they identify you and also be privacy preserving? 🤔
It's all AI. You should not worry about it. In fact you should not think about it. All is going to be fine.
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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?
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you can also take a picture of a person with a camera that senses light beams
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Someone’s going to use this to drop missiles on “baddies” with their sleeping families in 3 2 1
95.5% accuracy is abysmal for any use case these people want to use it for
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.
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You know, this, and the using wifi to see through walls stuff to me just immediately seemed to fall into "don't research this, it can only be used for evil".
I don't get why we bother studying these types of things.
We study it because EVERYTHING can be used for good or evil.
If we'd stopped researching anything that could be used for evil we'd never have gotten into the stone age
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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
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Wait… so the guys with tinfoil hats were on to something?
Except that the tinfoil hats don't work
Maybe wearing a different tinfoil hat every day would mess up a person's "fingerprint"
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Let me know when I can selfhost LibreFi Security on my router and use it for myself. Sounds great for private home use.
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