Humans can be tracked with unique 'fingerprint' based on how their bodies block Wi-Fi signals Researchers in Italy have developed a way to create a biometric identifier for people based on the way the human body interferes with Wi-Fi signal propagation. The scientists claim this identifier, a pattern derived from Wi-Fi Channel State Information, can re-identify a person in other locations most of the time when a Wi-Fi …
The wifi APs are usually above the people, so I think it would probably work pretty well. Especially as areas with a lot of people like airports will have multiple APs so if they could correlate their info the accuracy would be even higher.
The real question is whether it is even remotely efficient to track people this way, versus just putting up cameras. I suspect they'll choose the easier alternative. Using wifi to identify people might be useful to spy organizations than for general purpose bulk spying.
"Looks like the tin foil hat folk will be adopting tin foil jackets, too."
I immediately thought of a waistcoat tailored from a textile with a conducting thread woven into the fabric. By interconnecting the ends of those threads with impedances that an active element slowly but randomly varies in time the profile from the wifi RF (~2.4GHz and ~5GHz presumably) will be equally random, I imagine.
The Baldrick in this is that if you were the only one with such a garment you would stand out like the donkey's proverbial as the waistcoat's wifi profile would be quite distinctive compared when with that of an unadorned individual.
If you occasionally carried a packet of cigarettes with the foil/paper liner in your shirt pocket perhaps alternated with a hip pocket that might disturb the the distinctive RF patterns sought for profiling. (The packet can be empty. ;)
From the paper ( 4 Experimental Results and Discussion, 4.1 Dataset): "the dataset collects the CSI measurements of 14 different subjects"
Rather a small population, but, in all fairness, this work is not about unique identification of individuals but about tracking based on an initial acquired signature. So it's a neat piece of research.
It's privacy preserving in the sense that it doesn't inherently identify the individual unless the same data is available publicly or held in coordination with identifying data. Assuming the claims are true (I'm skeptical of their repeatability and uniqueness) it wouldn't, in isolation, make it more likely for an individual to be identified.
On the other hand, if used to match individuals across cameras, it wouldn't be privacy preserving if they are caught doing something or being somewhere illicit on one camera but are only visually identifiable on another (both equipped with the technology).
In both respects, it reminds me a bit of the promises of gait analysis (which didn't take off because the quality and frame rate of the average CCTV is insufficient for identification).
It's all down to the signal processing ability* at the radio head end. For the proof of concept you're right, initially very specific circumstances will be required to work but as with all human technology it'll get better as quick as the market will pay for and the market here is government TLAs.
*likely a dedicated processor for the first deployable system.
will it recognise me as a tripod with my walking stick or in my wheelchair, as the same person, (It can change 4 times from my front door to my car)? if so, at long f'ing last, a positive to having wonky legs. BTW when i was still able to walk for distances, the horses recognised me by the cadence of my gait, if morphologies can be determined , your gait is individual.
Boobs and willies. For a higher level of security, the latter could be captured both flaccid and erect, offering two factor authentication. For the ladies, a nipple print would be the 2FA option.
Excluding facial features, this protects privacy, whilst offering good security.
The WiFi ID wouldn't be a good idea, as the paranoid would all start carrying WiFi blockers with them.
Biometrics is a crap ID option that will only ever work well in the movies. Long, unique passwords are simply better. Also better than tying access to the most easily lost, broken and stolen piece of tech on the planet.
And academics should only get funds for socially beneficial stuff. If they are inventing spyware for the disorganised crime syndicates that control our countries, they should be funded by the military. Which doesn't always end well.
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