As if things weren’t creepy enough already.
A new application of WiFi could take surveillance to the next level.
WiFi already makes a perfectly good tracking device – government and law
enforcement agencies already collect location data from phones and
computers – but ultimately, its accuracy is weak.
Now, MIT tech geeks have found a way to pinpoint location and track
complex movement patterns with far greater accuracy – and what’s more, it can
track people’s steps through walls, and the individuals or groups don’t even
need to carry a cell phone!
As Activist Post reports,
Researchers continue to pursue invisible, pervasive ways to track human
beings. […] Now there might be a new concern on the horizon – public WiFi
signals that can identify and track groups of individuals, even if
they are not holding a personal connected device.
Holy… tracked and followed, with no cell phones even necessary?
Indeed. There’s little illusion left. Tracking humans is the whole point
of the technology’s application.
The project’s authors Fadel Adib and Dina Katabi explain in their abstract
for MIT:
Wi-Fi signals are typically information carriers between a
transmitter and a receiver. In this paper, we show that Wi-Fi can
also extend our senses, enabling us to see moving objects through walls and
behind closed doors. In particular, we can use such signals to identify the
number of people in a closed room and their relative locations. We
can also identify simple gestures made behind a wall, and combine a sequence
of gestures to communicate messages to a wireless receiver without carrying
any transmitting device.
It shows how one can track a human by treating the
motion of a human body as an antenna array and tracking the resulting RF
beam.
The MIT group are working with two similar platforms, known as Wi-Vi and
WiTrack – extensions of the WiFi technology we all take for granted. Gigaom explains the technicals:
WiTrack operates by tracking specialized radio signals reflected off a
person’s body to pinpoint location and movement. The system uses multiple
antennas: one for transmitting signals and three for receiving. The
system then builds a geometric model of the user’s location by transmitting
signals between the antennas and using the reflections off a person’s body to
estimate the distance between the antennas and the user. WiTrack is
able to locate motion with significantly increased accuracy, as opposed to
tracking devices that rely on wireless signals, according to Adib.
“Because of the limited bandwidth, you cannot get very high location
accuracy using WiFi signals,” Adib says. “WiTrack transmits a very low-power
radio signal, 100 times smaller than WiFi and 1,000 times smaller than what
your cell phone can transmit. But the signal is structured in a
particular way to measure the time from when the signal was transmitted until
the reflections come back. WiTrack has a geometric model that maps
reflection delays to the exact location of the person. The model can also
eliminate reflections off walls and furniture to allow us to focus on
tracking human motion.”
These videos make the tracking capabilities clear enough.
The tracked users will be potentially given incentives for using the
technology – with applications including the ability to turn off a light from
the other room by pointing at it through the walls.
Similar systems, such as the WiSee, have been developed specifically to allow users to
command smart appliances in their homes from other rooms by directing
gestures to turn on or off devices. It’s part of the lure of smart homes,
which also double as totally pervasive panopticons from hell.
Basically, high tech surveillance of your every action will be so common
place, that you will consider it domestic. Reporter Kevin Samson notes:
As if on cue, we are presented with the enormous benefits of this
low-cost technology, while being given none of the potential negatives.
In the video, we see the convenience element that would fit into the various
applications of smart
homes and the Internet
of Things. Secondly are video games, which would take the somewhat
cumbersome Wii to entirely new levels…
You’ll be able to tell if your kids listened to your orders to go to bed,
or whether they are playing quietly behind their bedroom door.
Meanwhile, your employers will know if you are sitting dutifully at your
station, and even if your breathing patterns give away dozing off for a nap
or getting overly excited by a diversion or game.
Law enforcement will know the location and movement of suspects behind
walls before knocking on the door (radar sweep devices already offer them this questionable
and unchecked power without a warrant), etc. etc.
There are many applications for this technology, but while it is being
sold as a consumer convenience (and novelty), more serious applications are
surely being used to track and log population movements with precision.
SHTF previously reported on this one:
• Location tracking Wi-Fi is now being tested in Seattle
and other locations as part of a wireless mesh network. Of course, most
already know that their cell phones and computers share data with their
providers, the NSA and a host of other data hungry watchers, but now the
police are using boxes set up at numerous street intersections to ping and
track cell phones in the area, logging location data for thousands of
drivers, passengers and pedestrians that could be used to establish the
whereabouts of a suspect, pursue criminals, as evidence in traffic disputes
or perhaps for crowd control.
The Wi-Fi tracking devices appear as white boxes mounted on poles or
street lights. The data interconnects through a wireless mesh network with
existing traffic cameras, police squad vehicles, networks of cameras and
other interfaces on the emerging fiber network, and a host of authorities in
the region, including police, the Sheriff’s Department and the regional
fusion center. Officially, the mesh network aides communication during
emergency scenarios, but also functions as a roaming live-time surveillance
network.
But again, the latest WiFi developments mean that you don’t even need to
be carrying a cell phone or computer to be tracked.
