USING WIFI RADIO TO SEE THROUGH WALLS… AN OLD IDEA, UPDATED A ...

...Yes you read that correctly, using Wifi radio waves, the proverbial "they" are now proposing to see through solid walls and track potential targets (just for fun, well use the language of the proverbial "they" and call these potential targets "terrorists"). No, this it not the latest comic book fantasy from Marvel or DC comics, it is not the latest Hollyweird special effects in a Mission Impossible movie. This one is coming from phys.org:

See-through-wall surveillance with WiFi shown at UCL

And hooray! the device, we are told, is no bigger than a suitcase and is perfectly adaptable for "urban warfare", being capable of seeing through walls of brick one foot thick, and can monitor both child and elderly "terrorists":

"The prototype is about the size of a suitcase and it carries two antennae and signal processing unit, to monitor baseline WiFi frequency in an area for any change that would indicate movement. The device in tests successfully determined a person’s location, speed and direction through a brick wall that was one-foot-thick. See Through The Wall (STTW) technologies are of great interest to law enforcement and military agencies; this particular device has the UK Military of Defense exploring whether it might be used in “urban warfare,” for scanning buildings. Other more benign applications might range from monitoring children to monitoring the elderly."

Of course, the announcement may come just a bit late, for if you'll turn back the clock a bit, to Waco, Texas, in 1993, similar infrared-based see-through-wall technologies were deployed by the outnumbered outgunned forces of the FBI and BATF that were under siege from the rapaciously murderous, fanatical, heavily armed and rabidly fanatical Branch Davidians.

What disturbs me here isn't even really the technologies that are being developed, but rather the fact that they seem to be reported by such organizations long after the fact of their initial deployment and use in a bit of "non-news." It is, I suspect, not a new phenomenon, nor are the technologies such as this all that new either.  The sad fact here is that the idea of using such methods to see through walls is already dated information... the military-intelligence-industrial-complex has already been there, done that...

One really suspects here that there is more going on than is being reported, that perhaps a see-through-walls-listen-in-to-connversations technology is being developed here, a portable one, convenient and affordable to local law enfarcement agencies... so... the next time you're in Starbuck's sipping your latte, and see a uniformed law enfarcement Offizier at his laptop, maybe, just maybe, he's listening into your cellphone call, tapping into your email, or, perhaps you can't see him at all, he's sitting in his cruiser, looking through the brick wall, watching your every move, and listening into your conversation, waiting for the right moment to "tazer first, Miranda later"...

See you on the flip side.