Microwave based ground penetrating radar is actually different from WiFi. Also the technology referenced in the link is a motion based body locator, not an identity recognition device.
This is different technology doing different things than what the original article was talking about.
VPNs will help. The article is only talking about VPN servers based in a location with a geo ban, which, duh. But if you actually use your VPN to be in a different country and not just a different city it’ll work fine.
Why do you need to identify specific cats over merely the presence of movement or cats in general?
If all you need is presence detection then a motion sensor would be vastly more efficient.
If you actually need identity detection, then maybe, but you’ll still have to have a camera or detailed access logs to associate the interference signature with a known entity and at that point you may as well just put an RFID reader under the bowl you throw your keys into or use facial or gait detection.
Probably not.
This kind of thing relies on the fact that the emitter and environments are static, impacting the propagation of the signals in a predictable way and that each person, having a unique physique, consistently interferes with that propagation in the same way. It’s a tool that reports “the interference in this room looks like the same interference observed in these past cases.”
Search and rescue is a very dynamic environment, with no opportunity to establish a local baseline, and with a high likelihood that the physiological signal you are looking for has been altered (such as by broken or severed limbs).
There are some other WiFi sniffing technologies that might be more useful for S&R such as movement detection, but I’m not sure if that will work as well when the broadcaster is outside the environment (as the more rubble between the emitter and the target the weaker your signal from reflections against the rubble).
Don’t think of this as being able to see through walls like with a futuristic camera, think of this as AI assisted anomaly detection in signal processing (which is exactly what the researchers are doing).
I’m generally pro research, but occasionally I come across a body of research and wish I could just shut down what they’re doing and rewind the clock to before that started.
There is no benefit of this for the common person. There is no end user need or product for being able to identify individuals based on their interactions with WiFi signals. The only people that benefit from this are large corporations and governments and that’s from them turning it on you.
Continued research will ease widespread surveillance and mass tracking. That’s not a good thing.
WiFi uses a subset of the significantly wider microwave band. Ground Penetrating Radar also uses a subset of the microwave band. While there can be some overlap, the frequencies desired for GPR will very broadly based on what you are looking for, what you are looking in, and how deep you are looking for that thing. The wattage supplied can also differ.
WiFi and Microwaves in general are most definitely not the same thing and I will absolutely encourage you to not set up a 1kW 3GHz jamming antenna for your WiFi needs.
Could you use WiFi for search and rescue? Maybe for a narrow set of circumstances, but in almost all situations a dedicated GPR option will be better.
This also won’t identify a victim, only revealing that one exists.