Well I heard about this and thought "this will be great for home automation", but I also know that someone was equally excited about using this to rob people of basic freedoms or being a fucking creep or both.

I doubt it. You'd need to be looking really closely at the waveforms to notice this, so they were likely already doing something similar, like that research that can pinpoint where people are in a house based on their WiFi. They were probably already doing something creepy before they noticed that this was more straightforward than they expected.

I mean I don't understand this as a lay person, so if it doesn't work then fair enough, but if wifi signals can identify human beings, and pets, when a building collapses better than other methods, or even augment the capabilities already used, then at least there is some benefit from this technique. It's not going to disappear, Genie is out of the bottle now, so why not at least put it to a good use instead of keeping it only being abused by the billionaires and other evil entities.

It's too late now to stop that and I hate that they can do this.

Please don't mistake me trying to find a silver lining as anything other than trying to find a reason that this isn't just another way we are fucked but the science is what it is so out it to better use. It's an interesting capability regardless of how it can be abused, and since we aren't going to stop using the technology we should really understand exactly how this works by using it and making it was beneficial as possible.. Until we were ready to ban the tech, which I have no faith that we will ever.

A bespoke device made to do this, not just your wifi router at home, might as well study it for good praises, or we may if only be abused with little defence against our collective abusers

Legendary reference

Once you start playing with radiowaves and antenna you start noticing the intricate ways it plays with and around bags of water like bodies. I'm sure the original research on location/movement tracking was due to scientists trying not to get interference, later once they figured it out it was natural to see how much data they could get out of a radio interference profile.

I remember the original tech was going to be marketed as a way to tell if your old person (parent etc) had fallen down and stopped moving. Not the best use case, and then the privacy implications became clear. Once that happens the race begins to exploit the tech.

...But the eventuality here is something like a Star Trek tricorder that can take multiple vitals and detect irregularities from across the waiting room. Sensors that remember who was in a room and what settings they had. Etc. Some cool thing besides the bad stuff (microtarget those ads).

All time is poo time when you're close to the boss's desk

The resulting image must just basically look like a shadow, I can't imagine that they're going to get much internal detail with Wi-Fi considering that my router's signal practically gets blocked by a piece of cardboard.

This research essentially amounts to, humans can be individually identified with nothing more than low quality x-rays. Well yeah, so what, you can also use visible light and in any situation where you're going to use Wi-Fi to detect someone, it's got to be easier to buy a cheap CCTV camera.

If it's your home why can't you just have a camera or motion sensor. Rather than trying to adapt something that isn't designed for the purpose.

Given your in-depth knowledge of Wi-Fi to consider it blocked by cardboard, I somehow doubt the rest of this comment is credible...

Everything is incremental progress in some way.

I remember years back someone doing experiments with Wi-Fi to see if a room was occupied based on signal attenuation.

This just looks like an extension of that.

Not everything is a giant leap

Never said that it wasn’t easy, it’s just harder than with facial recognition.
In theory you could do it correctly in a way that it isn’t indentifiable.

Also this works in places where faces are protected

A motion detector is far more inferior to precense detectors, most just use milimator wave though.

Wait… so the guys with tinfoil hats were on to something?

First of all: cardboard does NOT block electromagnetic waves. You need a Faraday Cage for that. And even then, it has to have holes of a certain size to block specific wavelengths/frequencies. It’s why you have a mesh on the door of your microwave for example.

Secondly: they’re not attempting to photograph you. Just identifying your unique signature once would allow them to track your location anywhere where they have the gear installed.

Except that the tinfoil hats don't work

Cameras require light, while radio waves works almost as well in darkness.

A motion sensor is an extra device that needs to be connected, have power and so on.

There are already radio wave motion- and room occupancy sensors where you can specify zones and so on, but if I could have personalized on top of that I'd take it.

Finally, using a thing for something useful other than its intended purpose is kinda fun.

Well okay you're not wrong, there is always some sucker out there.

95.5% accuracy is abysmal for any use case these people want to use it for

Maybe wearing a different tinfoil hat every day would mess up a person's "fingerprint"

Since it 'figerprints' you, changing your fingerprint by blocking parts of the signal with pieces of foil doesn't seem like a terrible idea.

Now, the question is: is such a tactic like wearing gloves, or like using super glue?