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MIT Is Building a Health-Tracking Sensor That Can See Through Walls (technologyreview.com)
Rachel Metz reports via MIT Technology Review: Imagine a box, similar to a Wi-Fi router, that sits in your home and tracks all kinds of physiological signals as you move from room to room: breathing, heart rate, sleep, gait, and more. Dina Katabi, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, built this box in her lab. And in the not-so-distant future, she believes, it will be able to replace the array of expensive, bulky, uncomfortable gear we currently need to get clinical data about the body. Speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Wednesday, Katabi said the box she's been building for the last several years takes advantage of the fact that every time we move -- even if it's just a teeny, tiny bit, such as when we breathe -- we change the electromagnetic field surrounding us.
Her device transmits a low-power wireless signal throughout a space the size of a one- or two-bedroom apartment (even through walls), and the signal reflects off people's bodies. The device then uses machine learning to analyze those reflected signals and extract physiological data. So far, it has been installed in over 200 homes of both healthy people and those with conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, depression, and pulmonary diseases, she said. Katabi cofounded a startup called Emerald Innovations to commercialize the technology and has already made the device available to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for studies.
Her device transmits a low-power wireless signal throughout a space the size of a one- or two-bedroom apartment (even through walls), and the signal reflects off people's bodies. The device then uses machine learning to analyze those reflected signals and extract physiological data. So far, it has been installed in over 200 homes of both healthy people and those with conditions like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, depression, and pulmonary diseases, she said. Katabi cofounded a startup called Emerald Innovations to commercialize the technology and has already made the device available to biotech and pharmaceutical companies for studies.
Seems like a great device for watching the imprisoned... Who is really asleep, and who is faking it. Sigh...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Tracking our cell locations, scanning our license plates, listening to us in our homes with smart speakers and tv's... and now you want to know what room I'm in and all my vitals all the time? Unless I'm already bed ridden and dying, no. Seriously!
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You can see through walls in a 2 bedroom apartment, and can detect cellular issues in a human body. Yeah, could those iffy whatevers be, I dunno, a dirty shirt hanging off a door knob? Or my sleeping body on the other side of my 42" flatscreen?
One would hope Theranos would be a big enough warning signal, but evidently there are way too many stupid idiots with more money than I'll ever earn in a lifetime. Wish I was smart enough to swindle, err, get them to invest in my company. Which turns empty beer caps into gold. It's patented, but trust me it works. Send me money (I have enough beer caps hanging off my ceiling) and I'll make you rich. Rich I say, Rich beyond your wildest imagination! Just send money. But don't call it beer money.
Nothing to see here.
This definitely isn't totalitarian technology. It certainly won't be used by the police-state government we don't have to ramp up the panopticon we don't already live in just a little bit further.
I'm sure the Stasi, the Gestapo, Big Brother Google, and the Department of War have no interest whatsoever in this technology. There's zero chance it will be used for evil. It's totally not true that this tech will be irresistible to a repressive government like we don't have.
In summary, there's nothing to worry about. Move along now.