Absolutely ludicrous to paint this development as anything but the wet dream of both a burglar and a police state.
Also VR nerds. Current tracking is either based on the headset, so you can't move your arms unless the headset can see them, or your arms have to be seen by lighthouses, or you rely purely on gyroscope and accelerometers for tracking, which tend to drift. So either you have blind spots, have to deal with occlusion, or will slowly drift and have to recalibrate periodically. Wifi-based tracking seems like a neat idea tbh.
Edit: considering wifi is just photons that aren't wiggling fast enough for us to see, I'd be surprised if the government doesn't already have this technology behind closed doors.
For VR I don’t see why we wouldn’t use a variety of other technologies before we ever use WiFi. The main issue with the WiFi thing is going to be polling rates and interference (which limits polling rates). They’re also using a neural net here which requires both processing power and time so there’s latency far beyond VR uses. That’s without talking about tracking that would be needed for higher spatial resolution which this also doesn’t have currently. So it’s not impossible to use this, just not currently practical or even close.
The real solve to that stuff is just an improvement on existing tech or maybe Lidar. With the progress that has been made on the Quest with hand tracking, I’d bet their next goal is body and face tracking so you’ll see this soon.
As for the government having this, I doubt they really need to have it this specific to track poses or body parts. If you have a cell phone on you, they likely know exactly where you’re at in a room. If you don’t, I’m betting they have access to other important data. Motion detection, number of people, room shape and some contents, interference sources.
Home automation nerds would also cream their pants if they could get their hands on this. Imagine you could use your existing wifi router to detect presence in your home. Say goodbye to shitty IR sensors that forget about your existence within 3 seconds, no more finicky radar modules that are either too sensitive or not nearly sensitive enough.
I mean you can look through my walls if you want, but don't come crying to me if you don't like what you see.
(I'm painting fantasy miniatures. They're for a friend.)
Same, but the fantasy miniatures are sex toys and the paint is my butt.
A good hobby is a wonderful thing, indeed!
You know what else let's you see through walls? Windows. (Suck it, Linux users!)
In more than one sense, yes.
Lead paint coming back into fashion.
I lick that 👍
paint myself in lead paint to become invisible. got it. /s
"we threw a deep neural network at the wall to see if it sticks"
Time to plaster your outer walls with fine wire mesh.
Lets hope the government is transparent about its use of this technology.
All the information you want to know is available at: REDACTED
Article is from a year ago. Government tends to be ahead of the curve. As an uninformed guess, they have been using it in high value situations for 4+ years.
(Dear FBI, the above is a guess based on public information. I don't know shit.)
Government tends to be ahead of the curve.
I dunno what world you're living in, but I live in a world where police still do nearly all their work with pencil and paper and if you want to talk to a police officer, no you can't talk to them on the phone or send an email. You'll have to have a meeting face to face.
Sorry, I don't mean the police.
Actually, police do tend to be reasonably ahead when technology is invasive. I've heard many stories about them seeing through walls with other technology. They also tend to like face-tracking, which is pretty advanced. They just are really far behind on technology that could be used to hold them accountable.
Israel has been using a similar system since at least 2022:
https://petapixel.com/2022/06/29/the-xaver-1000-sees-through-walls-and-is-made-for-the-israeli-army/
It's pretty likely that they have shared this system with their closest allies, similar to how the Trophy missile defense system found its way onto German and American tanks.
By the way, those throwable cameras mentioned at the end of the article have been available to the IDF since 2005.
Which leads to the obvious question: how long has the military been able to do this?
Here's the summary for the wikipedia article you mentioned in your comment:
TEMPEST is a U. S. National Security Agency specification and a NATO certification referring to spying on information systems through leaking emanations, including unintentional radio or electrical signals, sounds, and vibrations. TEMPEST covers both methods to spy upon others and how to shield equipment against such spying. The protection efforts are also known as emission security (EMSEC), which is a subset of communications security (COMSEC).
^to^ ^opt^ ^out^^,^ ^pm^ ^me^ ^'optout'.^ ^article^ ^|^ ^about^
Umm, article from Jan 19, 2023. I remember seeing it then. Is there anything new on this?
The paper: [Submitted on 31 Dec 2022] - I'm not sure if it's out of prepublication yet.
DensePose From WiFi - https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.00250
Here's another tidbit from July 2, 2023 DensePose from WiFi - See through the walls. - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/densepose-from-wifi-see-through-walls-alejandro-fern%C3%A1ndez
And another from July 25, 2023 Revolutionary Applications of DensePose From WiFi: Enhancing Corporate Security and Empowering Military Tactical Teams - https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/revolutionary-applications-densepose-from-wifi-enhancing-zack-hamm
Here's a video summary of the paper I thought did a good job too from two minute papers.
Wasn't this the plot point of The Dark Knight?
We only have to enter his name to be safe.
If I didn't have a reason for why Ethernet is superior, I have one now!
... that you CANT see through walls? Seems like a downgrade to me...
I am going to repeat myself forever it seems. We got it wrong when we decided that you only have privacy when someone can't physically see what you are up to. Nothing else is treated this way. You are not allowed to drive as fast as your car can physically move. You are not allowed to go into anything locked as long as you are able to pick it. You are not allowed to steal whatever you want as long as no one tackles you for it. And yet somehow some way it became understood that merely because someone can get a photo of you they have the legal right to do so.
As if access to better technology means you should follow less moral rules vs the opposite. Someone with a junk camera of the 80s can do far less perving compared to the new cameras+drones out there.
it became understood that merely because someone can get a photo of you they have the legal right to do so.
What jurisdiction is this true? There are certainly times that there is an expectation of privacy and getting a photo of you would be illegal. Easy example: and owner of a store can't photo you in the dressing room, the even tho they could put a camera in there. It's the same thing here, there is an expectation of privacy in your home (or for many enclosed and private spaces), so this kind of "picture" would likely already be a violation.
Duh? I don't think anyone with the right field of study thought this wasn't possible. It just doesn't have good use cases.
I'm an EE, and I have serious doubt about this actually working nearly as good as they are putting it. This sort of stuff is hard, even with purpose built radar systems. I'm working with angle estimation in Multipath environments, and that shit fucks your signals up. This may work it you have extremely precisely characterised the target room and walls, and a ton of stuff around it, and then don't change anything but the motion of the people. But that's not practical.
Henceforth, the building code shall make mandatory that every room be perfectly grounded Faraday cages (/s).
Still, imagine lethal drones integrated with that technology (of course, they already have infrared, maybe even some adequate wavelength of X-rays).
Nevertheless, pretty cool to see how far we can take preexisting technology with the help of some deep learning layers.
Here's what they're putting in the goggles that Infantrymen wear now.
I don't care to guess what the drones are packing.
Doesn't this mean the matrix film was right with their visualization (regardless of orientation)?
Wait, I thought this was a crackpot conspiracy thing?
This article is a year old. Do we have posting standards in here?
The tech is even far older than the article. I remember seeing this being demo'd at least a decade ago. Though, it looks like the fidelity has improved significantly from the early proof-of-concept videos that were floating around for a while.
Years ago there was a journal on gait recognition through home WiFi.
No one else getting batman : the dark knight vibes ?
Y’all, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
