Make no mistake, this is 100% going to be Comcast’s alternative to more expensive surveillance options a la Flock, or workplace presence sensor arrays.

  • saltesc@lemmy.world
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    14 hours ago

    If anyone didn’t already know, this isn’t anything new. It’s basically just WiGLE but not public level, and is using that to track devices coming and going.

    You don’t need Xfinity WiFi to do this. Everything you have with a BT or WiFi antenna is already out there and everyone can see it. It’s logged and recorded. Can literally see my neighbour’s got two iPhones moving around right now and I didn’t even get out of bed. Oh, they also have a JBL Encore Essential… That explains something that happened last week.

    • OakTree@lemmy.zip
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      37 minutes ago

      Wild amount of confidently incorrect here.

      For starters, what you describe tracks other electronic devices. That’s neat, but this new stuff is tracking bodies of interference. Meat bags. The fixed antennas and beam forming have given stereoscopic vision to interference identification on Wi-Fi routers. Before, it just saw an SNR spike between the router and TV, but it couldn’t tell if it was a cat up on the counter or a crowd in your living room. Now it can. Now it’s able to tell when something the size of a human walks past your ring camera without having any access to that camera.