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.

I think we're all being a little maximalist here? I think it's fair to say this article's focus is on the tech, so it doesn't discuss the cool stuff (incredible VR experience, sci-fi like gesture apps) or the bad stuff (Google knows when you scratch your ass). I think it's reasonable to read an article that doesn't mention any usage restrictions, look at the track record of tech, and worry about the privacy implications.

The Verge includes a whole section on stuff you agree to when purchasing a new laptop when reviewing them. Maybe it's a good idea for us to start insisting on some level of privacy regulation on new tech. This is purely regulatory right, nothing preventing things like VR--just preventing FB from knowing everything you're doing while using their VR headset, and selling that information to others. Maybe that creates an economic constraint, but this seems like a choice consumers can make. For example Amazon sells 2 versions of every Kindle: ad supported and not.

It's starting to feel like the #1 go-forward privacy law needs to be a mandatory opt-in choice requirement, with a viable refuse option.

It can be asked once at the device level, but regulated information needs to be specified at the highest level (e.g. "location information about an individual"), and then the concrete technical implementation left unspecified.

"Does it, or does it not?" is more important than "How?" Because legislation specifying "How?" will always lag technology by decades.

(But then again, this probably should have been done in the mid-90s, once it was apparent which way cookies were going)

Right yeah, or something less like "pay $40 to opt out" either before or after purchase, and more like "earn $0.002/day by selling your usage data". I guess the overall worth of the data is lowered by there being less of it, but whatever.

As a privacy nut I would be a lot more into this kind of tech if it didn't require connecting to the cloud.

> privacy advocates

Who on earth is actually not an advocate for privacy?

> I want things to sense when I fall and call for help for me.

There's no need to sacrifice privacy to achieve this. [0]

> I want my routers to suggest that I'd get better coverage by moving it.

This is really more an issue of proprietary software than a privacy concern, no?

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

Communications are by default expected to be private. Highly public and non-private communications are advertised as such since the use case is so specific and often times, nuanced. In almost all circumstances there is hardly any "good," at all without best-practices privacy protections included.

[0] https://mbientlab.com/store/

I'm fine for this as long as it is opt-IN

No, because your "balance" will land in the middle, which is to say that it will outright destroy a great deal of privacy.

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

With cameras and motion sensors you more or less know how they'll be used and as a user you can choose to disable them (or at the very least block them if you can't disable them).

With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether. Added to that, I'll bet that most people wouldn't even begin to imagine that WiFi could be used for sensing people, and they'll continue using WiFi without being aware for the grave privacy implications.

> With this technology, it will be integrated into your router (and clients?), so turning those off will mean to turn off WiFi altogether.

It's rather unreasonable to think that you won't be able to turn off band on router. Especially given fact that 60Ghz is heavily shielded by _doors_, so any usable router would require fallback 2.4/5/6 Ghz connectivity.

802.11bf Wi-Fi 7 Sensing works with all frequencies, 2.4 and up.

Even if Neighbor 2 turns off their router, Neighbor 1 could passively use the radio waves from Neighbor 3's router to surveil reflections from Neighbor 2, including keyboard typing, heartrate/breathing, location and physical activity.

Previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27123493

The problem with this neighbor-spying fear is that "complex math using data from radio waves to sense stuff" is already possible and readily available by anyone willing to study and put in the world of building it, wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics.

Removing the PhD-level knowledge requirement from this particular mode of being an asshole doesn't sound like much of an improvement

yes, but the real threat with this is not that it makes something possible that is already possible, but it makes the barrier to use that tech a LOT lower.

Wrapping my house in tin foil is sounding a lot less conspiracy theorist now! Actually my house is going to be stuccoed - I wonder if they are using a metal mesh that I can ground. Hmm...

> wifi 7 isn't suddenly enabling that part of rf analysis or mathematics

It makes it suddenly ubiquitous when all new WiFi devices use the new standard.

There's no reason to assume any of that.

RF is far less hindered by stuff like walls.

Your next door neighbor’s wifi will know your every movement, and can probably image it too. End of privacy within closed doors.

This is hyperbole. 60GHz cannot penetrate walls and closed doors. 2.4GHz and 5GHz lack the resolution to image you, especially if your adversary only has control of one AP. There are already tons of side channel attacks with existing WiFi and Bluetooth that reveal when someone is in the area. Your neighbour could already be tracking your devices, for all you know.

Here are 400 research papers on Wi-Fi sensing with 2.4/5Ghz, https://dhalperi.github.io/linux-80211n-csitool/#external

Thank you! Also, I can lid the device in a drawer. It’s greatly different than tracking exactly what I’m doing in any room. Also, consider flats next to each other.

Do you have those at home?

Clearly you've not met my cat.