HN Reader

I've been telling people for ages to not trust ISP provided hardware. Notice the vague language here which means they reserve the right to share private information for anything that might be called an investigation, or for any dispute which includes them (didn't pay your bill?), or a subpoena.

    Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena.

Plus, sharing isn't limited to a court or law enforcemnt agency - they reserve the right to share information with any third party.

This is scary, particularly considering how the current administration wants to weaponize everything they possibly can.

> Subject to applicable law, Comcast may disclose information generated by your WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you in connection with any law enforcement investigation or proceeding, any dispute to which Comcast is a party, or pursuant to a court order or subpoena.

Sounds like, at least in some limited circumstances (using the provided WiFi AP, having this feature turned on, etc), ISPs are going to be able to tell law enforcement/courts whether anyone was home at a certain time or not.

Xfinity won't give folks in certain locales (maybe everywhere in the US?) unlimited bandwidth unless they use their modem/router. This seems like a good reason that practice should be illegal.

If you ask the Xfinity managers who came up with this idea whether thieves will be able to buy live information on whether your home is empty from hackers on the dark web, the managers will likely say... nothing. What they will do is look at you with a deer-in-the-headlights expression in their shocked faces.

Sigh.

I don't want my ISP doing this to me, but it sounds like something pretty cool to do myself. Does anybody know what the current state of "self-hosting" this kind of functionality is?

In case anyone is skimming the headline and comments: It's not enabled by default. This is an optional feature that you have to find, turn on, and then select up to 3 WiFi devices to use as reference signals:

> Activating the feature

> WiFi Motion is off by default. To activate the feature, perform the following steps:

The actual title of the article is "Using WiFi Motion in the Xfinity app".

I remember reading this paper when it came out, didn't think it would be commercializable, and here we are.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2486001.2486039

This is a neat feature when it's your own device that you control, but not so great when they "disclose information generated by WiFi Motion to third parties without further notice to you."

I wanted to talk about how responsible WiFi router software authors can make things local-only (and I've done that in the past; no way to get this information even if I wanted it). But this is always temporary when "they" can push an update to your router at any time. One day the software is trustworthy, they next day it's not, via intentional removal of privacy features or by virtue of a dumb bug that you probably should have written a unit test for. Comcast is getting attention for saying they're doing this, but anyone who pushes firmware updates to your WiFi router can do this tomorrow if they feel like it. A strong argument in favor of "maybe I'll just run NixOS on an Orange Pi as my router", because at least you get the final say in what code runs.

I was reading Hyatt's Privacy Policy and they mention biometrics (and even genetic information for some reason). Does this mean they can analyze all of my behavior in the hotel room?

I'm not about to find out. I really liked Hyatt, too.

Sensing is (sadly) part of Wi-Fi 7. If you have a recent Intel, AMD or Qualcomm device from the past few years, it's likely physically capable of detecting human presence and/or activity (e.g. breathing rate). It can also be done with $20 ESP32 devices + OSS firmware and _possibly_ with compromised radio basebands.

This is actually a feature of the Plume wifi mesh devices. https://support.plume.com/s/article/Sense-Live-View?language... It's also available from any other ISP that uses them, or if you buy your own Plume device and a subscription. It's been there for years. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2020/03/from-wi-fi-to-spy-fi...

Put your cable modem in bridge mode and use your own WiFi.

I used to recommend using your own cable modem as well, but these days you have to use the Xfinity modem to avoid overages if you're in a market with data caps.

Comcast has a stellar network operations unit, but their business operations are creepy and exploitative.

To whom it may concern, for those who use the modem in bridge mode, it is possible to discreetly pop open the Xfinity modem and disconnect the wireless antennas.

Okay I'm as concerned about privasy as everybody else is here but i also gotta admire that its pretty neat they can actually do that. Are they measuring the signal echo like what radar does? If they controlled both the receiver and transmitter i wouldn't be as surprised to find out they can tell when something crosses between them and form a 2-dimensional mesh (like that episode of Star Trek TNG where geordie detects cloaked romulan ships by having starfleet deploy a fleet of ships that send signals back and forth and look for timing variances) but if I'm understanding correctly this is different because they only control a single point in the network?

I wonder if they have enough information to make out shapes or if it's just a simple rangefinder?

About fivish years ago I interviewed with a Wi-Fi device maker and the engineer I interviewed with was bragging that they could watch users walk around their home.

One takeaway from this is that there's a strong privacy case for disabling the built-in wireless network from your ISP-provided modem/router and using your own, to reduce the number of ways that your ISP can surveil you.

The term for this sort of thing is "WiFi sensing". Relevant HN thread from 2021 ("The next big Wi-Fi standard is for sensing, not communication (2021)"): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29901587

As far as I can tell, devices were already on the market when that thread was made. 802.11bf was standardization to help along interoperability and future products.

What is the escalation path for replacing or removing the corrupt public utility commissions that allow these fraudulent and unethical monopolists to continue operating?

We have endless cases of Comcast and others criminally abusing their granted monopoly and the PUCs simply allowing them to run roughshod over consumers.

How do we fix it?

This reminds of an MIT-licensed library that was Vibe-coded and released three weeks ago. The source is available here: https://github.com/ruvnet/wifi-densepose

I worked in a nascent water tech space recently involving an IOT water flow sensing device installed on a main water line. I worked extensively on detection models capable of distinguishing water fixture use during simultaneous usage scenarios. When your full time job involves a niche domain such as this, a whole new world begins to reveal itself. You can distinguish people based on their patterns of fixture usage. You can determine how many people are living in a residence. You can determine hygiene habits of each person. There's a lot more to these smart home devices than what meets the eye. You thought the sensor was good for just detecting leaks and approximately breaking down water consumption? Think again.

This device alone is capable of doing a lot, but when combined with other sensing devices such as a WIFI motion detection system, you can create a system where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. First, you may not even need to monitor water flow now because detecting a person in the bathroom, moving about, is sufficient to detect toilet usage followed by hand-wash, and shower usage. You will know duration of each. You may be able to distinguish people in a residence, which means you'll learn who did what throughout a household.

Right about now you may be wondering who would ever want to know this kind of stuff? Who cares if you just used the toilet and didn't wash your hands? Who cares if you frequently use the toilet, or wash your hands excessively, or frequently and excessively wash your hands throughout the day? What if you are a landlord with a tenant leasing agreement stipulating no one other than the listed members on the contract shall occupy the residence without permission of the landlord (with exceptions, of course).

Score one more point for the tinfoil hat crowd:

1. Black tape over our webcams to keep them from watching us.

2. Cardboard over our windows to keep laser microphones from hearing us.

3. RFID blocking wallets to keep our money safe from them.

4. WiFi motion detectors watching our every move in our own home. <---You are here.--->

5. Aluminum underwear keeping our private parts from being scanned into AI at airports.

6. Tinfoil hats protecting our thoughts.

One more reason not to use an ISP router, although in this case most of us are at minimum carrying around GPS homing beacons in our pocket so the carriers already know where we are.

Is Xfinity licensing Wifi Motion™ from Cognitive Systems?[0]

"WiFi Motion, Cognitive’s Wi-Fi Sensing solution, is an innovative software platform that leverages AI and sophisticated algorithms to transform existing Wi-Fi signals into a motion sensing network."

Another company operating in this space is Origin Wireless. They demonstrated breathing detection with WiFi in 2017[1]. They've since partnered with ISPs to offer a WiFi Sensing "TruShield" home security service.[2]

[0]https://www.cognitivesystems.com/

[1]https://www.engadget.com/2017-10-09-origin-wireless-motion-d...

[2]https://www.originwirelessai.com/trushield/

Linksys has offered similar functionality (“Linksys Aware”) since 2019.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/8/20905223/linksys-aware-me...

Worth mentioning that unlike some ISPS Xfinity does let you use your own DOCSIS modems, which is the ideal way of using an ISP. ISP provided gateway's WIFI is not ideal for privacy, security and performance.

Comcast in general has a long history of snooping around and messing with users' traffic. Not that the alternatives are much better. Regular folks are screwed on this matter.

But perhaps for HNers setting up your own trusted WIFI AP and routing it (and all other traffic) through an internet gateway that routes your traffic over a secure channel (whatever that is for you, Tor, VPN services, VPN over your own cloud/vps,etc..) is ideal. It goes without saying, your DNS traffic should also not be visible to the ISPs.

Keep in mind that they sell all this data (including the motion data) not just to law enforcement but to arbitrary well-paying data brokers and other clients.

Next step it will just be a feature they offer and whether you know of it, use it, or want it, it'll always be on in the background due to you signing a terms of service that lets them. And then it'll not just be in a xfinity router but your tv, phone, etc. Just makes me want to live in a cabin in the woods.

Could I sufficiently foil their mechanism here by not connecting any WiFi devices to their access point and then wrapping their access point with foil? Or would you need to take it all the way and put the device in a faraday cage? I’ve always wanted to build one but never had the motivation. Maybe this will be the impetus I need to finally make one! Like others have stated I use the ISP provided hardware to get around the data cap. But connect nothing to it other than my own router.

I'm sure people will want to make it seem like Comcast is doing something evil here, but they're not:

> Comcast does not monitor the motion and/or notifications generated by the service.

> This feature is currently only available for select Xfinity Internet customers as part of an early access preview.

> WiFi Motion is off by default.

Features like this at Comcast are typically one or two engineers on a random team coming up with a cool idea, testing it out, and if it works, they ask if they can roll it out en-masse. If it's just a software or server/backend thing and it doesn't have any negative impact, it gets accepted. Despite their terrible customer service and business practices, they do some cool stuff sometimes. They also release a fair bit of home-grown stuff as open source, which is expensive and time-consuming, but [they hope] it attracts engineers.

Up next - Comcast will pause ads when it detects that you've walked into the kitchen - or raise the volume. Advertisers can pay extra for this feature.

If it is what I think it is -> I worked on it at Technicolor.

The tech is very cool, the initial pitch was to fine tune wifi performance to get the best bandwidth\coverage ratio for a particular customer. But indeed, during testing we quickly discovered that we can map apartments and houses to some extent. You knew when someone was on the toilet for example.

Funny, Xfinity has been spamming me for months now trying to get me to get off my own hardware and onto theirs. Promising me vague "speed improvements" (and of course without ever bothering to provide a single piece of data about how/why speed would be improved, or by how much). No, no I don't think I will.

Soon ICE will have given Comcast enough money to provide a live feed of the neighborhoods they are targeting and where all the bodies are that match the height of their targets.

We need to be finding the xfinity wifi hotspots in our neighborhoods, knock on doors, and help people understand the risks they are creating for themselves and their neighbors and how to setup their own routers.

Can't help but imagine a reality where this is widespread and people resort to installing radio reflective curtains/decorations that freely move with slight ambient air currents in an effort to scramble the reflections and make it as hard as they can to measure.

Something like a belly dance belt around the router could also work.

I really wish Xfinity focused on providing a reliable service instead of building out next gen surveillance machines

> WiFi Motion will function only in areas of your home where you have strong WiFi signals traveling between your gateway and your WiFi-connected devices, and Comcast does not guarantee or warrant performance.

It is clearly just monitoring RSSI and everybody's acting like this is some spooky radar based technology.

Might be useful for people to investigate hardware mods that disable WiFi on their newer gateways. I have an XB3, but motion detection requires an XB7/XB8: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43527521

How long is it before a starlink has this capability. Maybe a stretch, but also inevitable. I think about the fact that there are probably many uses of starlink that don't involve a consumer login, they just provide ubiquitous surveillance wherever.

I treat the ISP-provided gateway as a part of the internet, I don't use its WiFi and don't attach other devices to it which are not my own router or a honeypot. The subnet the gateway resides in is like a moat surrounding a castle.

Can anyone recommend a worthwhile setup for me? I am interested in switching my setup on Cox. It seems the Arris S33 plus Unifi Dream Router is one of my best options for good speed and features like ad blocking and VLAN? Best to buy direct from the manufacture or is Amazon ok?

On one hand, cool. On the other hand, why? This doesn't seem terribly accurate or insightful. A security camera is cheaper and has a better sensor and logic for detecting motion.

People here claiming "stick the ISP modem in a microwave oven, put on a tin foil hat and use your own device" -- do you truly, 100% trust that nobody but you has access to said "own" device?

Are there any kits to place my comcast modem in a faraday cage?

I recall years ago reading a research paper on WiFi signals being used to track people through wall using MIMO…then American Express investing in the technology and now this…

Myself and my buddies worked on it. This might sound ripe with "conspiracy". I know how it's going to sound. Take it for what you will. Initially wanting to know things like, whose in what room, how many people, and what your actively doing, who you socialize with most etc. Been working on this since they bought Skydog/Powercloud. Purposely "helped" design the spec for wifi since Wifi 5 or earlier. How do we get more sensor devices into the home? Build an IoT line of business and make wifi "better". Imagine seeing the the entire USA on a map (comcast "national watchtower" tool), and then seeing what each router can "see", including those xfinity hotspots. One, giant, signal map of devices with tagged metadata such as a percentage associated to "who" owns the device, what the device is, and what apps you have installed, which you are using at this current moment, any health and biometric data in case grandma fell over and can't get up. There is always a hidden SSID transmitting. p0f is nicely preinstalled on the wifi router cpe. Now create the standard firmware RDK for worldwide use purchasing cable/tv networks in other countries. (Sky, IoT companies in Italy). Now give them more ability, like to unlock your home "MyQ" (comcast ventures "investment"), why stop there, get into businesses such as taco bell with LoRaWAN. Add xfinity mobile for that extra juice of seeing all the little SIMS (game) characters on the (very real) map so you can recommend to them how to better schedule their life. It's all there. Now take that same map, and make it global. Attend the next SCTE conference and see it all for yourself. They're proud of it. I thought, I was too.

Looking forward for Wifi singnal scrambling. I mean if we take things like Spectre seriously (I don't to a large degree), this would certainly qualify as well.

3 cat feeders(small dispensers) 3 different recurring times, 3 cats = never a dull moment for the FBI on watch...

Great, I always wanted to

  - be able to spy on my neighbors
  - add more surveillance systems into my house
  - have my neighbors be able to spy on me through my walls

I get that there is utility to this thing but come on, they don't even guarantee that the information is private and they say they collect it. Does the boot really taste that good? Why are we so obsessed with surveillance and giving people the power to surveil ourselves? Why are so many devs complicit in developing these tools? Again, I can understand how there's honest and good nature utility to them, but just because something has utility doesn't mean you get to ignore any harm. This trade-off is literally the whole of ethics in engineering. Engineers both create the tools for utopia and the tools for autocracy. The bitter truth is that often tools for autocracies are created while trying to create tools for utopias. But frankly, I'm not convinced this one is in that ambiguous gray zone...

I always turn off every feature on every router I don't own and use it in pass through mode.

Given that your ISP is monitoring your DNS, is wifi motion (usage is probably as valuable) really that bad?

I have Xfinity as a backup isp. Bye bye!

Reason 732 why I would never use the network gear provided by an ISP.

Yeah, disable that wifi on an device not controlled by you

Does wrapping their modem in foil work at defeating this thing in any meaningful way? I have my own router.

>WiFi Motion is not a home security service and is not professionally monitored.

That's funny because it does sound like they suggest it be used as such.

Reason #293674 to always use your own router and modem as often as possible

Not with the ancient barely working WRT54G that comcast keeps nagging me to replace!

It’s creepy there is an Exclude Small Pets mode.

Yet another reason to refuse to rent their modem or router.

One more reason yet to have my own modem.

I did this a decade ago. We can detect your breath rate. It's far more sensitive with modern units.

Can you block this with a pihole?

The race is on to find the cheapest/easiest decoy that can simulate such motion (because if everything is moving, then nothing is moving). A tube man in every corner?

Okay, so buy my own router and then put the ISP one in a metal box. Gotcha!

Note that according to the website: "WiFi Motion is off by default."

so is this just looking at the SNR for any given connected device and looking for sudden dramatic changes in it?

Just get your own router and don't use ISP provided router.

is ther an adblock for https ? can we do subdomain https ad blocking ?

...and promising to give it to cops.

Turn that thing off.

Xfinity is the worst service I'd ever used.

I'm boring. I want a pipe, like a water pipe for data, and I'll do the rest. This makes them actively combative.

Ignoring the whole TV/landline stuff they keep pushing as that's too easy a target, they are actively hostile about just using internet.

It was way cheaper to use their modem. About $15/mo. Why? Because they want a huge hotspot network in every house. They swear it won't affect speed, but as I never got close to advertised speeds, I didn't believe that. They also act as their 'cell network' that they try to push, and basically call you an idiot for declining. In fairness their cell network is pretty cheap, but I'm just not interested.

I chose to pay more to use my own modem, and they absolutely hounded me, stopping just short of calling me stupid about once a month. Maybe it was commissioned sales people searching for people like me as a given, and getting mad when I rebuffed.

And let's not even talk about data caps. Which, by the way, using their modem exempted you. Why? I naively assume because they can't differentiate hotspot data from yours. Maybe I'm wrong.

The whole service is dystopian. I moved since luckily to a rural, middle of nowhere area that does their own fiber. It has zero of those issues, and costs about half as much for twice the speed. It makes you realize how scummy they really are.

>tape a smartphone to your roomba

>stream audiobooks

>leave house, commit crime

I had a conspiracy theorist tell me one time this is why they removed all the lead paint. It never quite made sense that kids were actually eating lead chips.

I know lead is bad for you, maybe a coincidence.

>WiFi Motion is off by default

holy shit we live in a matrix