Honestly I don't see any purely technical solution to this. At some point we have to demand that laws be written to outlaw this.
Reclaimyourface.eu
Both partially funded by EU's Horizon2020 program.
Openwifi talk at FOSDEM 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q5nHUWP43U
For home, chicken wire in the walls and wired networks. A Faraday cage is the simple solution, but unfortunately for this case is unlikely to be in most interior walls in modern buildings.
The technical solution is pretty simple: do not use Wi-Fi. I use wired connections for all of the devices in my household. The only non-technical aspect of the solution was an interior design-based one about unobtrusive cable wiring around the house.
I find it equally ridiculous to try to outlaw software radio that might listen to "unapproved" radio bands, or listening to clear-text WiFi, baby monitors and cell phones.
It's almost as stupid as people who would want brain implant computers to implement DRM so people can't record and share their own memory of a movie.
Another analogy would be a country of blind people trying to legislate sighted people wearing blindfolds, because all of their privacy fences have huge holes in them.
Technology improves people's abilities. Adapt.
Also I do not agree on "technology improves people's abilities" statement. It is always based on how the technology is used. Famous example. Harnessing nuclear energy. You can use it to blow up cities or to generate power around the world.
One shouldn't develop technology for advancement's sake. Every new technology should be given thorough thought and analysis into it on why is it needed? and are the negatives outweigh the positives? or vice versa? and so on.
Standing in someone's garden, peering through their window is dealt with via legislation.
Since the invention of video recording devices, rather than having everyone upgrade their windows, legislation was reinterpreted and updated to govern the recording of people in private places vs public places.
It doesn't seem unreasonable for the same to be done to keep up with other forms of technology.
It's just not possible to make a wall that can't be seen through, at least without making them tens of meters thick, even using high density concrete, tungsten, or uranium.
Muons aren't photons, but cosmic muon tomography has been used to image the Great Pyramid of Giza and also several mountains. Exposure times for cosmic muon tomography are very long, but with enough exposure time, correlating 5-minute blocks across days, someone could work out mean density throughout your house and make low-res 3D video of your daily routine, even with 1 meter thick walls of reactor-grade high-density concrete with sheet steel cladding.
Rebuilding all houses in the world because someone creates a totally superfluous gadget. Seems reasonable.
I am not excusing the privacy implications, which will be abused to the extreme. However, it will be used also for health reasons, like monitoring respiration, and activity.
> her work on X-ray vision was chosen as one of the "50 ways that MIT has transformed computer science."
And the housing market.
https://groups.csail.mit.edu/netmit/sFFT/soda_paper.pdf
The sparse fourier transform : theory & practice - Haitham Al-Hassanieh (thesis, 2016 MIT) - Dina Katabi (thesis advisor)
What does everyone think is going to happen with capabilities like that?
> We identify a number of critical issues that need to be addressed in this space... First, 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.
Bad news, the paper proposes remote human identification by every Wi-Fi device.
> This would require the widespread introduction of reliable SENS algorithm for human or animal identification.
Would opt-in be legally easier than requiring human body scan registration for opt-out of Wi-Fi remote sensing?
In order to not be tracked you must consent to be tracked so we know you don't want to be tracked.
This should not be done or allowed. Period. It's a huge invasion of privacy.
Or, better yet, make it totally opt in.
And if $CAFE tracks you regardless of you not ticking the box or connecting to the network, how do I detect that as a regular customer?
Unfortunately these will be everywhere, far beyond any existing camera surveillance network.
2012 article on a military use case, https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2012-07/seeing-thr...
2017 video on an industrial use case, https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/wi-fi-radiation-tran...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/the-nyp...
The cost of those devices should fall with 802.11bf Wi-Fi.
> the vans deliver a radiation dose 40 percent larger than delivered by a backscatter airport scanner; bystanders present when the van is in use are exposed to the radiation that the van emits… there may be significant health risks associated with the use of backscatter x-ray devices as these machines use ionizing radiation, a type of radiation long known to mutate DNA and cause cancer.
Could this radiation meter detect the presence of such a van?
https://www.gqelectronicsllc.com/comersus/store/comersus_vie...
I've been looking into this for a while, should be mature enough in a year or so. there are already dozens of companies in this space
e.g. lockpicks are regulated, how about wallpicks-via-WiFi?
you think?
http://lockwiki.com/index.php/Legal_Issues
https://unitedlocksmith.net/blog/the-locksport-travel-guide-...
> In Japan if you are found with lock picks you will be subject to a fine of 500,000 yen and a year in prison. In Poland, it is illegal to possess any picks without being able to show that your profession requires it ... In Hungary ownership of lock picks is completely illegal. The only people in Hungary that are allowed to have these tools are the military, and as a result lock picks are classified as military equipment. For travel within the United States or even traveling to the US, you should consult the lock pick laws in the state you are visiting.
Scary times.
Imagine gradually choking as you wait for a friend to open their front door - oops, you forgot their air doesn't know you're allowed to use Oxygen, hope they get here in time to explicitly authorise you to breathe...
Because of the Network Effect the grand total number of Networks you care about will always be... one. So, it doesn't make sense to have a dozen fiercely independent WiFi networks in the same physical volume all of which are, in fact, just offering access to the same network (the Internet) but with separate credentials needed for each.
There have been very slow steps on the obvious way forward here. If you've been a student somewhere civilized in the last couple of decades you might have seen EduRoam. Under EduROAM your credentials from say, the University of Florida, or Stanford work at MIT and NYU, but also in Oxford, and in Tokyo. No more need to maintain separate "guest" networks so that the visiting lecturer's laptop works. But most of us, most of the time, are using dozens of little pointless fiefdoms.
Also putting all your big-tech eggs in one basket isn't a great direction for the Internet.
OTOH the technology can move from private radios to the model of cellular networks, where you don't care which tower you connect to, and the security / authorization lives at a different level.
But, yes DVD players come with license agreements, EULAs.
Please tell me you're joking.
Other places I'm not sure, but I'd guess you'll get one anyway.
Will they hold up in court? Who knows. But look and you're likely to find one they'll at least pretend applies to you.
(And to be clear, yes I agree that this is _ridiculous_)
If you're feeling especially crafty, open the back of your TV and disconnect the wifi/bluetooth board. It's a discrete board in all of my TVs of different brands. I assume they build them this way so they can use the same network board design/production for years and just upgrade the main logic board in newer models.
Even if it isn't/hasn't happened, there's nothing to stop someone like Samsung sticking cellular modems in their TVs to work around you doing this.
If we think about it like Air-Tags too, popular enough product, it'll just connect to one of your neighbour's TV's which _is_ online.
I remember years ago, Vodafone gave me a "free" femtocell because signal in my home was poor. They neglected to mention the fact it broadcast a public cellular signal which allowed other Vodafone customers to use _my_ internet bandwidth.
True. Although, if they put that SIM card on the bluetooth/wifi network board that I'm disconnecting then I'll be ok.
I would be surprised if they used cellular technology for this though (from a cost perspective). I'd expect a lorawan/helium like implementation.
Amazon has a solution to this. If your tv is within wifi range of an amazon device, your TV will be able to connect to a network. It might even be your neighbors device.
e.g. the Samsung QB65R on Amazon
So yeah it's like $100-200 more expensive, but hardly seems.. unapproachable?
Even radiuz was probably better.
https://wifinetnews.com/archives/2004/06/radiuz_combines_wpa...
yes, yes it was https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRELLH86Edo
Personally, I'd like it if my devices knew what room I was in. Back in 2013, I'd started working on a home automation project with that goal in mind, but then all these closed source devices came out that were incredibly cheap and convenient and I haven't revisited the idea since.
I do look back with a bit of regret that more hasn't been done to push for reverse engineering these devices or somehow encouraging companies to open source their routers to support third-party operating systems, etc. We take for granted that we've open source smartphones and standard PC specifications when we don't yet have a standard that could let me run YouTube TV on my Echo Show 8, for example, or add lossless FLAC playback to my smart speaker...
I have screens on my windows so I can have them open yet not have bugs wandering in and out - just pick wire mesh and ground it. Done!
From chicken wire to mesh with 1/8, or less, inch rectangles.
I imagine the whole room would have to be covered with lathe. In good construction the lathe is covering every sq. inch of a room before the the base coat is put on.
Plaster wall are not typical anymore. Stucco is still used on exterior walls, but it usually just covers up ap the foundation, and might extent up the wall a few feet.
Plaster walls in a bathroom are the best walls though. The house I'm in has 1" thick plaster walls, and they hold up to a lot of abuse.
A well plastered plaster room would need screen on the door too, but that's doable.
If I was building a house, it would have stucco walls. Maybe only the exterior walls, and the ceilings? Then my signals could go room to room, but the world is locked out.
No one uses chicken wire, but it works just as well as the new smaller holed lathe sheets.
I still have no clue if modern sheets of lathe would act as a Faraday Cage?
I have fooled around with Faraday Cages, and tiny openings matter.
(I remember hearing about a guy who stole a vechicle with lowjack. He covered the vechicle with chicken wire, and the cell signal with through? He was caught.)
Funnily, there are much easier ways to do that, although they require direct line of vision [1]. Another option would be to measure the vibrations on walls (think glass on the wall, but hitech).
[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2020/06/eavesdropping...
Instead of going to such extreme lengths though, it's more sensible to lobby for political change. There is absolutely no legitimate reason this should be introduced as a general standard for all wifi divices. This sort of spying needs to be illegal unless specifically approved in limited cases.
> In three years or so, the Wi-Fi specification is scheduled to get an upgrade that will turn wireless devices into sensors capable of gathering data about the people and objects bathed in their signals... When 802.11bf will be finalized and introduced as an IEEE standard in September 2024, Wi-Fi will cease to be a communication-only standard and will legitimately become a full-fledged sensing paradigm... tracking can be done surreptitiously because Wi-Fi signals can penetrate walls, don't require light, and don't offer any visible indicator of their presence.
IEEE 802.11bf paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2103.14918
Papers on device-free wireless sensing (DFWS): https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/
Remote sensing with low-cost ESP32 and 802.11n: https://academic.oup.com/jcde/article/7/5/644/5837600