Remember when people got called conspiracy theorists for saying 5G was going to be used as a catastrophically invasive surveillance weapon? Look at what is possible with just a WiFi router… [0:40]

[–] • 2 pts

Again, WiFi uses radio frequency photons to transmit and receive.

The electromagnetic spectrum goes all the way from the lowest possible wavelength being the size of the universe (very low energy) to high energy gamma rays that top out when they have enough energy to start having mass like effects. Visible light is just a small band of the EMS with the higher energy (thus higher frequency) photons starting at violet going down to red. These different energy photons are attenuated differently by different substances. This is how prisms work, the glass attenuates the different frequencies of the light just a little more than the last, spreading them out. What is transparent to one frequency band is opaque to another. As an example, visible light can pass through glass easily but infrared light is blocked. If you could see only infrared, glass windows would look black or very dark.

We are constantly bathed in a wide range of frequencies both natural and man made. Spotting someone or something of interest is just a matter of finding the right "color" in the spectrum. Think along the lines of that scene in the predator movie when it was switching through the different modes in it's visor.

This is just a new layer on top of what amounts to radar.

Radar sends out bursts of microwaves and picks up the reflections to spot objects. This is analogous to strobing a flashlight in a dark room to find your way if the battery was low or you wanted to lower your chances of being seen by others. Both can be used continuously but radar is usually strobed for a variety of reasons.

The thing that most people don't know is that you can't see anything smaller than the wavelength of the light you are using. This is further compounded by the fact that the sensing element plays a large part in this as well. The physical size of the smallest effective sensing element will also have a large effect on the amount of detail you get. The wavelength of 2.4GHz is about 5in and 5GHz is about 2⅓in. 5G which isn't WiFi but whatever, would be much better to use at seeing things as its wavelength is 0.039 to 0.39 inches. The size of the antennas used to pick up the signal and how densely they can be packed is a big part of the limitations currently.

This technology is concerning but, your router is not a camera. It is a light bulb. The camera is elsewhere. So, what is stopping the light source from being elsewhere? Nothing. your house or car can be illuminated from one vehicle and be "photographed" from another.

Your microwave is a light bulb with a shade on it. your TV is a dim light bulb unless it has WiFi, your HAM radio is a big fat light bulb if you have one, your walkie-talkie, your phone, just about anything that uses electricity emits EM energy, including your brain. And that can be used to spot your location with sensitive enough detectors .

The thing that worries me about this is that AI may find a way to boost the sensitivity of instruments enough either through better signal/noise discrimination or novel detector design to find a person using just their attenuation of natural background radiation, or the radiation other than infrared that we emit.

Again, WiFi uses radio frequency photons to transmit and receive. The electromagnetic spectrum goes all the way from the lowest possible wavelength being the size of the universe (very low energy) to high energy gamma rays that top out when they have enough energy to start having mass like effects. Visible light is just a small band of the EMS with the higher energy (thus higher frequency) photons starting at violet going down to red. These different energy photons are attenuated differently by different substances. This is how prisms work, the glass attenuates the different frequencies of the light just a little more than the last, spreading them out. What is transparent to one frequency band is opaque to another. As an example, visible light can pass through glass easily but infrared light is blocked. If you could see only infrared, glass windows would look black or very dark. We are constantly bathed in a wide range of frequencies both natural and man made. Spotting someone or something of interest is just a matter of finding the right "color" in the spectrum. Think along the lines of that scene in the predator movie when it was switching through the different modes in it's visor. This is just a new layer on top of what amounts to radar. Radar sends out bursts of microwaves and picks up the reflections to spot objects. This is analogous to strobing a flashlight in a dark room to find your way if the battery was low or you wanted to lower your chances of being seen by others. Both can be used continuously but radar is usually strobed for a variety of reasons. The thing that most people don't know is that you can't see anything smaller than the wavelength of the light you are using. This is further compounded by the fact that the sensing element plays a large part in this as well. The physical size of the smallest effective sensing element will also have a large effect on the amount of detail you get. The wavelength of 2.4GHz is about 5in and 5GHz is about 2⅓in. 5G which isn't WiFi but whatever, would be much better to use at seeing things as its wavelength is 0.039 to 0.39 inches. The size of the antennas used to pick up the signal and how densely they can be packed is a big part of the limitations currently. This technology is concerning but, your router is not a camera. It is a light bulb. The camera is elsewhere. So, what is stopping the light source from being elsewhere? Nothing. your house or car can be illuminated from one vehicle and be "photographed" from another. Your microwave is a light bulb with a shade on it. your TV is a dim light bulb unless it has WiFi, your HAM radio is a big fat light bulb if you have one, your walkie-talkie, your phone, just about anything that uses electricity emits EM energy, including your brain. And that can be used to spot your location with sensitive enough detectors . The thing that worries me about this is that AI may find a way to boost the sensitivity of instruments enough either through better signal/noise discrimination or novel detector design to find a person using just their attenuation of natural background radiation, or the radiation other than infrared that we emit.

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