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)
submitted 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) by bignose@programming.dev to c/technology@lemmy.world
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The Sapienza computer scientists say Wi-Fi signals offer superior surveillance potential compared to cameras because they're not affected by light conditions, can penetrate walls and other obstacles, and they're more privacy-preserving than visual images.

[…] The Rome-based researchers who proposed WhoFi claim their technique makes accurate matches on the public NTU-Fi dataset up to 95.5 percent of the time when the deep neural network uses the transformer encoding architecture.

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[–] Revan343@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Being able to scan and model a 3D environment using wifi? Sure. Wifi-fingerprinting the people in the scan? Why?

[–] Jarix@lemmy.world 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I mean I don't understand this as a lay person, so if it doesn't work then fair enough, but if wifi signals can identify human beings, and pets, when a building collapses better than other methods, or even augment the capabilities already used, then at least there is some benefit from this technique. It's not going to disappear, Genie is out of the bottle now, so why not at least put it to a good use instead of keeping it only being abused by the billionaires and other evil entities.

It's too late now to stop that and I hate that they can do this.

Please don't mistake me trying to find a silver lining as anything other than trying to find a reason that this isn't just another way we are fucked but the science is what it is so out it to better use. It's an interesting capability regardless of how it can be abused, and since we aren't going to stop using the technology we should really understand exactly how this works by using it and making it was beneficial as possible.. Until we were ready to ban the tech, which I have no faith that we will ever.

A bespoke device made to do this, not just your wifi router at home, might as well study it for good praises, or we may if only be abused with little defence against our collective abusers