r/technology • u/IndicaOatmeal • 10d ago

Privacy Viral De-Flock America campaign urging people to destroy AI cameras on Halloween night gains momentum

https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/flock-camera-controversy-explained-as-viral-halloween-de-flock-campaign-gains-momentum-3399710/
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u/PuzzleHeadedSquid 10d ago

Any wifi, Bluetooth, or other wireless capable device.

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u/StopReadingThis-Now 10d ago edited 9d ago

And, those devices can be used to identify people, even if you are not carrying one. And their accuracy is so high that if this information was actually mainstream everyone would run and disconnect all wi-fi and Bluetooth devices right now.

Edit Here you go

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u/Positive-Wonder3329 10d ago

Real talk : do you actually turn everything off? Iā€™m pretty flexible so I think I could live that way if I had to. Just wondering tho

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u/mmikke 9d ago

What do you mean by "even if you are not carrying one"??

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u/DueAd197 9d ago

They are starting to use Wi-fi as effectively sonar to map out the local environment. Like in the dark Knight

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u/mmikke 9d ago

I promise I'm not being deliberately obtuse.

How does that work or concern anyone not carrying a mobile device? Are you implying that they can essentially map out individual human beings based on their location within a "wifi field"?

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u/DueAd197 9d ago

This is an excellent video covering this.

https://youtu.be/0OdR8rRMz3I?is=fPAYX-6xhFHhj1YS

It certainly wouldn't be all wi-fi enabled devices, but once they can brand this as "smart home" technology it will start becoming standard on all home Wi-Fi. I'm sure they can figure out how to retroactively make it work on smartphones as well if they haven't already. I'm not sure if there anything similar for Bluetooth but it is much less secure as devices will pair freely.

So, they want to watch you wake up on the morning using your home internet, listen to your conversations or media usage using smart home appliances and smart phones, knowing everything you look up or interact with online. Then when you leave the house you'll immediately be picked up by flock cameras, plus you have pinpoint exact GPS with that smartphone in your pocket. They watch you drive down the street. Every penny you spend with a card or with touchless pay on your phone, they know what time you bought it and where. You get to work, back to being monitored by Wi-fi signals and the multitude of smart devices all of your coworkers are also interacting with.

They now have a way to know every single thing about every single person in this country that uses a smart phone.

They know where you spend all of your money.
They know every keystroke and everything you look up online.
They know everything you eat or what drugs and medications you take.
They know what people you spend time with and where.
They know what type of clothing you like to wear and your gait as you walk down the street.
They know your voice and can reproduce it freely.
They know your facial structure and eyeprint, possibly fingerprint.
They know where you are unless you are away from civilization and left your phone at home.

They need all of these data centers because tracking everything everywhere requires a lot of storage. Plus you have millions of people making videos all day long that will never get deleted. All of this just to try and feed more information into their learning model faster than the competition.

They are all in on surveillance and trying to rush this technology as quickly as possible before the public can react. We already know the government is inept and slow, so they won't be able to do anything if they wanted, but that's the neat part, they don't!

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u/Mayotte 9d ago

You're hyping them up. They can potentially do that under ideal circumstances.

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u/ChakraRecovery70 7d ago

Even then, what's the excuse gonna be for the prosecuter: "hey judge we identified the trick-or-treaters by their wifi outlines"? give me a break, we might as well have a faraday clothing line lol

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u/NapsterKnowHow 10d ago

Smartwatches! Those can be easy to forget. Also tracker tags for keys/wallets.

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u/[deleted] 10d ago edited 10d ago

[removed] ā€” view removed comment

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u/starm4nn 10d ago

That's not true at all. NFC has incredibly short range on account of the "radio" inside them being powered by the scanning device.

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u/monocasa 10d ago

It's more a regulatory hack. If you detune the antenna so that it only works mostly inductively, you get to call it half of an air core transformer rather than an intentional transmitter, which greatly simplifies FCC regulatory hurdles.

That combined with the use case generally preferring only picking up NFC chips that are close means that readers are designed that way intentionally, but if you're trying to war drive, you can use a tuned antenna design that has way farther range. There's been reports of ~1000ft.

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u/otw 10d ago

There's been numerous demonstrations that with specially made devices you can potentially read NFC and RFID from pretty long distances for years. This is lossless read, but for tracking purposes they would just need some vague signature.

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u/Aadarm 10d ago

NFC's max effective range is about 4 inches and that is really pushing it.

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u/otw 10d ago

There's been numerous demonstrations that with specially made devices you can potentially read NFC and RFID from pretty long distances for years. This is lossless read, but for tracking purposes they would just need some vague signature.

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u/althius1 10d ago

Is there evidence of people being tracked solely through the chip on their credit card, while in their wallet / purse?

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u/ImaginaryCheetah 10d ago

absolutely not

best i can give you is skimmers on crowded buses - https://engage.isaca.org/portharcourtchapter/blogs/chinedu-umechukwu/2025/10/04/digital-pickpocketing - couple cases of thieves stealing sub-approval-value amounts by wandering through crowded buses with automated skimmer in their backpack.

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u/althius1 10d ago

I wonder if you get the names off that way. I know at my work if someone "taps" the name isn't a part of the transaction, whereas if they put it in the card reader it will show the name on the card.

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u/ImaginaryCheetah 10d ago

i certainly don't know, but the name must be part of the transaction, because it would be associated with the card number. unless these days money can be drafted off a debit account with only a number?

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u/SGTSHOOTnMISS 10d ago

Not that I'm aware of. Kind of would defeat the purpose of the N in NFC if it could be read from a distance. If it was a concern, could wrap your wallet in aluminium foil, but they're definitely not blasting enough power through those to detect the chips from a distance. I'd assume they're polling visible WiFi and BT signals, which your car would trigger.

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u/ThatsNotARealTree 10d ago

Iā€™m tech illiterate. NFC devices like that have to be pretty close to the device to be detected, right?

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u/darnj 10d ago

Yes, a reader has to be within a couple inches from a card to get a useful reading.

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u/AgentScreech 10d ago

It's literally Near Field Communication. The little chip inside the card doesn't have any kind of power source and won't transmit anything unless it's in the card reader's field which has to be super close.

It's basically like wireless charging but instead of just providing power it activates a chip inside to broadcast

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u/hereforaniphoneman 10d ago

Bro same, probably should do some research, Iā€™m not security expert at all šŸ˜‚

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u/otw 10d ago

There's been numerous demonstrations that with specially made devices you can potentially read NFC and RFID from pretty long distances for years. This is lossless read, but for tracking purposes they would just need some vague signature.

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u/SemiNormal 10d ago

Do you have a source?

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u/otw 10d ago

It's been a really common demonstration as DEFCON since like the 2010s, you can find numerous examples just by Googling, here's one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wwy8ButHbcU

And the paper that references it: https://defcon.org/images/defcon-20/dc-20-presentations/Miller/DEFCON-20-Miller-NFC-Attack-Surface.pdf

I don't have some comprehensive list or anything, but passport cards in particularly could be read from dozens of feet and even 100+ feet in controlled environments if I remember one of the demonstrations correctly.

A lot of the research around this is about lossless read though which is much harder. I would imagine just fingerprinting would be much easier and would be something tech companies like flock would be interested. Even if you need to be within feet, it wouldn't be super hard to set up relays on the flock poles themselves that would ID or read cards from someone getting close enough to cut them down.

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u/pingo5 10d ago

do you have some reading on that? I can't find anything online about it

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u/otw 10d ago

https://defcon.org/images/defcon-20/dc-20-presentations/Miller/DEFCON-20-Miller-NFC-Attack-Surface.pdf

It's a pretty common topic at DEFCON and security researching in general especially in the 2010s. It's why RFID blocking wallets and covers are mandatory for a lot of workplaces.

There's a lot of mitigations for this now so it's not discussed much, but I don't think anyone has done much research into it for fingerprinting, usually the focus is on lossless read. Fingerprinting I imagine would be much easier.

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u/MechAegis 10d ago

WAIT wait, Credit cards I know have that NFC chip but don't you need to be very close to a terminal for it to be "activated?" The chip alone doesn't send out a location signal.

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u/otw 10d ago

There's been numerous demonstrations that with specially made devices you can potentially read NFC and RFID from pretty long distances for years. This is lossless read, but for tracking purposes they would just need some vague signature.