AI has turned every WiFi router into a camera that can work in the dark

Going to put in skunkworks as this comes from random twitter video: Twitter link

"Suddenly AI has turned every WiFi router into a camera that can work in the dark, specially tuned to track the living being"

The imbedded twitter video describes using routers first with cameras and Wi-Fi signals to train AI to recognize people, then taking away the video, and the AI learns to recognize the people just using the wifi signals.

Problems that instantly come to mind:

1 clickbait headline as not all routers are going to have camera in them, though if I remember right some company was… like comcast or time Warner… let me get link. ABC news says it was Verizon and google. but those are only patents. Not sure it was ever implemented.

2. Even if this technology is possible unlikely widely deployed. It would take huge data centers to do this. Why bother on most people. Now if your a person of interest it might happen. For years us government has been intercepting purchases and replacing them with identical devices with spying mechanisms. According to CNET they are now doing it to routers for ‘international’ spying…

So that link makes this all the more probable, but unlikely to be in "every" router.

Possible but improbable for “every" Router.

a reply to: pianopraze

Now I know why I have always had an old biscuit tin over my router and never switched on wifi.

Cables are King and healthy skeptisism is a God.

Not sure about the fridge freezer though...it talks to me in little noises and I don't know if it's on my side.

Clownword can be fun.

I can’t find it now but I recall reading about military tech that allowed for the conversion of wifi field data and its interactions to create a 3D imagine of the space and things inside it.

Years and years ago. The more wifi points and field intersection the greater the resolution.

It’s basically the same as the sonar imaging machine Batman uses in the Dark Knight. Full image of everything inside the field.

a reply to: pianopraze

a reply to: nerbot

Our fridges are now spying on us.

Our doorbells…

Our TVs…

Our…

To long a list. Clown World indeed.

originally posted by: Athetos
I can’t find it now but I recall reading about military tech that allowed for the conversion of wifi field data and its interactions to create a 3D imagine of the space and things inside it.

Years and years ago. The more wifi points and field intersection the greater the resolution.

It’s basically the same as the sonar imaging machine Batman uses in the Dark Knight. Full image of everything inside the field.

a reply to: pianopraze

Same. This tech fascinates and terrifies me at the same time.

I have seen some tech with my own eyes that I don't know if I believe.

a reply to: theatreboy

I was born early 70’s.

I never expected the world to turn into real life 1984…

a reply to: pianopraze

Reminiscent of the mobile phone/app used to map the building in "The Dark Knight".

It is just another form of radar. Simple anaylsis of the signals bouncing back to a receiver. While most routers would not likely be able to do a 3d model of the room, it would be very easy to tell when objects are moving within the room.

I don't see walls being a problem. The signal already is known to penetrate the walls. Theoretically it would be easy to make a map of where things move within the range of the router. This information would be enough to make a rough layout of a building and track activity. It is even possible to identify individuals by size, movement and actions.

This all assumes that an individual is not carrying a cell phone or smart phone device. Those would be infinitely easyer to track and make maps with the information.

It is not a camera, it is a radar tracking system.

a reply to: beyondknowledge2

A corollary tweet to the one in OP collaborates this.

The technology does work through walls.

So FBI et all could just install such a router in neighboring apartment, hotel room, etc.. and see into suspects.

Guess private eyes could use this too… imagine not just getting pictures, but Wi-Fi videos of cheating spouse.

a reply to: pianopraze

Why bother installing anything new? Everywhere has wireless routers and anything that accesses them is just another signal adding more information. Smart phones, refrigerators, washing machines, lightbulbs, cars, all would contribute to better tracking resolution and range.

It might not know what color your underware is but it might know you went to the bathroom closet from the sink then back to the sink at a certain time and conclude you need more toothpaste. Ding, your phone has a toothpaste add.

I was thinking on countermeasures, easiest one is to rotate and change the angle of the router often. It would have to learn all over again. This is not affective if you have smart devices as it is hard to turn around your refrigerator and it would still be in the same general location from the router.

a reply to: pianopraze

this from 2017,

"It can basically scan a room with someone's Wi-Fi transmission," Philipp Holl, a 23-year-old undergraduate physics student at the Technical University of Munich, told Business Insider.
Scientists have found a way to photograph people in 3D through walls using Wi-Fi

to be honest i doubt that unless AI has found a real good way to dial it in, they won't be able to tell excactly who or what someone or something in a room is.

wifi in my house can be mighty iffy. sometimes in some rooms you can't get a signal, when in the others the signal is full strength even with repeaters /extenders.

a reply to: pianopraze

While I am unable to access the source, social media is hardly authoritative (as you acknowledge).

However, here are a few thoughts:

While attempting to solve WiFi issues, I have come up against the issue that most WiFi chip-sets do not monitor radio data that is not compliant with a WiFi signal. Even interference at the same frequencies as the WiFi are invisible to most WiFi monitoring apps, unless you purchase specialty hardware. A WiFi retail grade chip-set is usually not capable of performing radio spectrum analysis. This would mean that any data mining would be only in the effect that occurred on fully compliant WiFi signal strength.

Secondly, WiFi is diffuse. There is nothing to focus the signals to produce a conventional image.

And, although newer MIMO and multi aerial systems can use lobed dispersal and have some phase discrimination, there is no coherence to the source/s, and so a virtual holographic image is also out of the question.

I doubt very much that the system could discriminate between a dog and a human, or group of humans at a greater distance. It may be able to discriminate between the presence or non-presence of someone close to the WiFi, but it could hardly be used to 'spy' on people. Also, the compute resources would be massive just to detect some gross difference in signal.

It is far easier to collect data using mobile devices which collect and broadcast biometric, geolocational, and communications information. Most people currently carry one of these with them at all times.

originally posted by: BernnieJGato
a reply to: pianopraze

this from 2017,

"It can basically scan a room with someone's Wi-Fi transmission," Philipp Holl, a 23-year-old undergraduate physics student at the Technical University of Munich, told Business Insider.
Scientists have found a way to photograph people in 3D through walls using Wi-Fi

to be honest i doubt that unless AI has found a real good way to dial it in, they won't be able to tell excactly who or what someone or something in a room is.

wifi in my house can be mighty iffy. sometimes in some rooms you can't get a signal, when in the others the signal is full strength even with repeaters /extenders.

You forget the best thing AI is good at, analysing and interperating patterns in data.

Individuals could be identiryed by their daily habits. Such as this individual spends more time within the area of the food appliances on these times of day, that one must be the cook of the group. The one that stays in the room with the biggest tv at this time is doing as usual. The one that leaves at this time of the morning hasen't left today. Oh, it is a holiday.

AI will analyze all this much faster than any human can.

As far as private investigators and even police investigators go, they will go away. No need for someone to investigate anything when all you need to do is ask an AI for the history of a location or individual in question.

a reply to: chr0naut

An AI would understand these limitations and work with them. The computing power necessary is irrelevant as long as the AI is interested or assigned to the task for some reason. The internet is full of computing power for an AI to 'borrow'.

If TPTB really have listening and visual surveillance technology approaching these levels or beyond they certainly are significantly more in control than the masses are led to believe. So much so that they probably would cherry-pick what they want to stick their noses in. I'm sure they would love to have it but those levels would be hard to believe.

originally posted by: putnam6
If TPTB really have listening and visual surveillance technology approaching these levels or beyond they certainly are significantly more in control than the masses are led to believe. So much so that they probably would cherry-pick what they want to stick their noses in. I'm sure they would love to have it but those levels would be hard to believe.

I remember about 2006 time just when the digital television was coming out in the UK a friend showed me a video of a guy looking up the pages of bumf that came with those digital boxes and at the back was a piece about how when you signed the agreement you were giving them permission to watch how you reacted to the adverts .

He videod himself going into a store and buying a box , took it home and opened it up and showed a hidden camera inside this cheap digital box , not that many years ago the chairman of Samsung television department said not to say anything sensitive near one of their televisions. .

So this news does not shock me in the slightest

Data center in Utah created in 2012:

Inside one of the U's better-kept secrets: the Downtown Data Center

[it.utah.edu...]

Then we have Nasa's data collection center, 7 times bigger than the Pentagon:

This article is more than 10 years old
Welcome to Utah, the NSA's desert home for eavesdropping on America
This article is more than 10 years old
The NSA's new $1.7bn facility in the heart of Mormon country has the potential to snoop on US citizens for decades to come

[www.theguardian.com...]

China doesn't have squat on the USA as far as control goes; we're just a lot sneakier about it.

Found this interesting UK university paper...


discovery.ucl.ac.uk...


We already carry around tracking, listening and camera devices with us, so cannot see tech firms wanting to invest heavily.

I don't use Wi-Fi myself, everything is wired via ethernet and the Wi-Fi emitter is switched off on my router.

My immune system has miraculously strengthened

originally posted by: stonerwilliam

originally posted by: putnam6
If TPTB really have listening and visual surveillance technology approaching these levels or beyond they certainly are significantly more in control than the masses are led to believe. So much so that they probably would cherry-pick what they want to stick their noses in. I'm sure they would love to have it but those levels would be hard to believe.

I remember about 2006 time just when the digital television was coming out in the UK a friend showed me a video of a guy looking up the pages of bumf that came with those digital boxes and at the back was a piece about how when you signed the agreement you were giving them permission to watch how you reacted to the adverts .

He videod himself going into a store and buying a box , took it home and opened it up and showed a hidden camera inside this cheap digital box , not that many years ago the chairman of Samsung television department said not to say anything sensitive near one of their televisions. .

So this news does not shock me in the slightest

A television is a transducer, just like a speaker. Many don't know you can turn a speaker into a mic, and a mic into a speaker.

I never understood those who can't see the TV as a camera also.

originally posted by: nugget1
Data center in Utah created in 2012:

Inside one of the U's better-kept secrets: the Downtown Data Center

[it.utah.edu...]

Then we have Nasa's data collection center, 7 times bigger than the Pentagon:

This article is more than 10 years old
Welcome to Utah, the NSA's desert home for eavesdropping on America
This article is more than 10 years old
The NSA's new $1.7bn facility in the heart of Mormon country has the potential to snoop on US citizens for decades to come

[www.theguardian.com...]

China doesn't have squat on the USA as far as control goes; we're just a lot sneakier about it.

The Utah Data Center contains enough storage to track every single man , woman , and child's every transaction , movement , medical , on and on , for the next 100 years.
That is EVERYONE in the world's information .
Stored.
For the next 100 years.
Read that on multiple science and technology websites back in the day .