Scientists in Germany have demonstrated a startling new form of surveillance: identifying people using nothing more than ordinary WiFi signals. By analyzing how radio waves bounce around a room, researchers can effectively “see” and recognize individuals — even if they are not carrying a device and even if their phone is turned off.
This requires training on the specific network that you want to target, so unless the snoop has several weeks worth of training data where they know exactly what room you’re in at what time, then it’s not a realistic attack. Someone who has that much inside information doesn’t need this technology to know where in the building you are.
What’s stopping someone from just deploying their own wifi networks around, similar to flock cameras?
Presumably, the room itself. This isn’t about the router so much as the shape of the room and the way the waves move through the room in terms of data.
So, you use it to map out an empty office and then to surveil workers?
It has to be trained on the disturbances in the EM field that people create so no, an empty office wouldn’t train it.
But… if the router collects the data… it is just a matter of time. The room will stay constant. People will change. And there you have the fundamental information to infer ID