this post was submitted on 25 Jul 2025
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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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[–] Hikermick@lemmy.world 2 points 11 minutes ago

Reminds me of the Christian Bale batman movie where he could spy on everywhere from the bat cave. Seemed so far fetched it almost ruined the movie

[–] Sundiata@lemmy.world 1 points 24 minutes ago

And this here folks is the true ending. No one there is going to stop it as always.

Congratulations! You are now fully fucked!

There is the draft dodger, he is located in building #52556 in this city, info updated 125 milliseconds ago. He left his phone at his house 5 states away, go get him.

[–] panda_abyss@lemmy.ca 9 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You know, this, and the using wifi to see through walls stuff to me just immediately seemed to fall into "don't research this, it can only be used for evil".

I don't get why we bother studying these types of things.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

We study it because EVERYTHING can be used for good or evil.

If we'd stopped researching anything that could be used for evil we'd never have gotten into the stone age

[–] jaemo@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 hours ago

Yeah, like, why learn how to split the atom if all we can do is splode stuff. It's not like we can cure cancer or power things without emitting planet killing gasses or anything.

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.zip 2 points 3 hours ago

This has me wondering how my sack of potatoes body would look 🤣

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 14 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

you can also take a picture of a person with a camera that senses light beams

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

The most primitive of physics concepts, the transmission/absorption/reflection of energy, is completely unknown to most people it would seem.

[–] chunes@lemmy.world 14 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

95.5% accuracy is abysmal for any use case these people want to use it for

[–] nutsack@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

what if you combine it with other types of imaging

[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago

Dingdingding

[–] voodooattack@lemmy.world 8 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Wait… so the guys with tinfoil hats were on to something?

[–] Baleine@jlai.lu 7 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Except that the tinfoil hats don't work

[–] 2910000@lemmy.world 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Maybe wearing a different tinfoil hat every day would mess up a person's "fingerprint"

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 3 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

you might be onto something.

take a mylar square and place it somewhere random on your body every day.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

Eat a piece of spinach and increase the iron in your body.

This is all beyond stupid and hysterical.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

instructions unclear, I have glued spinach to my skin and the rabbits won't stop chasing me.

need further instruction.

[–] Krudler@lemmy.world 3 points 1 hour ago

Actually you've gone far enough to baffle the system.

I would say have fun frolicking with the rabbits?

[–] Pulptastic@midwest.social 3 points 2 hours ago

Yep it has to be random to mess with the algorithm. You could have fun and cut different shapes each day.

[–] ileftreddit@piefed.social 66 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Why would someone research something like this? God damn, like use your life for good, homie

[–] MouldyCat@feddit.uk 7 points 6 hours ago

You think if people who publish their work publicly didn't research things like this, they would just never be discovered?

At least this way, we all know about the possibility, and further research can be done to see what can mitigate it.

[–] douglasg14b@lemmy.world 13 points 11 hours ago

Everything is incremental progress in some way.

I remember years back someone doing experiments with Wi-Fi to see if a room was occupied based on signal attenuation.

This just looks like an extension of that.

Not everything is a giant leap

[–] StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk 26 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Well I heard about this and thought "this will be great for home automation", but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 1 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

If it's your home why can't you just have a camera or motion sensor. Rather than trying to adapt something that isn't designed for the purpose.

[–] StenSaksTapir@feddit.dk 5 points 9 hours ago

Cameras require light, while radio waves works almost as well in darkness.

A motion sensor is an extra device that needs to be connected, have power and so on.

There are already radio wave motion- and room occupancy sensors where you can specify zones and so on, but if I could have personalized on top of that I'd take it.

Finally, using a thing for something useful other than its intended purpose is kinda fun.

[–] gcheliotis@lemmy.world 25 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I can imagine this being initially an accidental discovery like oh every time so and so’s body interacts with the WiFi signal it’s the same pattern… until someone starts exploring this further… and then some engineer or their manager started looking for applications for this. In my experience engineering researchers especially are very good with coming up with use cases for whatever tech they’re working with, with little ethical consideration.

[–] sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 6 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

I doubt it. You'd need to be looking really closely at the waveforms to notice this, so they were likely already doing something similar, like that research that can pinpoint where people are in a house based on their WiFi. They were probably already doing something creepy before they noticed that this was more straightforward than they expected.

[–] turtlesareneat@discuss.online 4 points 16 hours ago

Once you start playing with radiowaves and antenna you start noticing the intricate ways it plays with and around bags of water like bodies. I'm sure the original research on location/movement tracking was due to scientists trying not to get interference, later once they figured it out it was natural to see how much data they could get out of a radio interference profile.

I remember the original tech was going to be marketed as a way to tell if your old person (parent etc) had fallen down and stopped moving. Not the best use case, and then the privacy implications became clear. Once that happens the race begins to exploit the tech.

...But the eventuality here is something like a Star Trek tricorder that can take multiple vitals and detect irregularities from across the waiting room. Sensors that remember who was in a room and what settings they had. Etc. Some cool thing besides the bad stuff (microtarget those ads).

[–] Glitterbomb@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)
[–] Evotech@lemmy.world 0 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Well, that’s quite different, it didn’t identify anyone

[–] Sabata11792@ani.social 49 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Incorrect bio-signature detected, drink verification can to continue your content.

[–] ayane@lemmy.vg 2 points 17 hours ago

Legendary reference

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