I wish Wifi would be restricted for network use and not (invisible, non-consensual) surveillance or monitoring of any kind.
Maybe it's time to start contacting regulators, who probably have no idea about this
If you want more information about this whole thing as an engineering project, check this comment from a few years back with lots of links: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22480444
Is it? You require any wireless device to have open source firmware and then people can a) inspect what the existing firmware is doing and b) replace it if it's doing anything they don't want it to.
It's a matter of replacing the existing obscurity-focused laws discouraging them from doing this with the security-focused ones that require them to.
The benefits in terms of right-to-repair and ability to patch vulnerabilities in devices the OEM has abandoned redound on top of this.
That said, wireless devices are basically "light bulbs" in whatever spectrum they operate in. It's very hard to restrict people from driving by with a "camera". I believe these kinds of applications are called "passive" in the literature, and 5G is especially designed with this in mind. WiFi has been known to be good for this for a while.
In order to facilitate more privacy preserving communications that are less sensing friendly we would need highly directed packets using stuff like microwave lasers etc., so as to reduce the ambient radiation.
Restricting someone from having a device that can do that is basically a lost cause. Anyone could make one using a variety of existing commodity equipment or use SDR with multiple antennas. It doesn't matter what some future Wi-Fi device does in that respect because if it's their device they can do whatever they want. If that's your threat model you either need a law that bans them from doing that or a Faraday cage around your building.
You would get uncomfortable seeing an IEEE 802.11dp that's able determine if you're wearing an underwear that day, but they are going in that direction.
IEEE has a whole working group for standards around this stuff: https://signalprocessingsociety.org/community-involvement/in...
Here's a paper about related standards: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/11142711
The paradigm itself goes back decades now. It used to be called "joint communication and sensing" in the 00s, and then it was called "integrated sensing and communications".
2023, https://www.policemag.com/technology/article/15541542/first-...
> “Once you place it against the wall, it takes one scan to show you where everything is, then over time anything that moves will pop up.. It can detect someone moving through the room or someone sitting on the couch and breathing. The small movements of breathing are enough for the radar to discriminate between the couch and the person.”
2015, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2015/01/19/police-radar-...'
> At least 50 U.S. law enforcement agencies have secretly equipped their officers with radar devices that allow them to effectively peer through the walls of houses to see whether anyone is inside.. The radars were first designed for use in Iraq and Afghanistan. They represent the latest example of battlefield technology finding its way home to civilian policing and bringing complex legal questions with it.
A lot of spaces you assumed were private are no longer so.