Wi-Fi your foe

WHEN I think of Wi-Fi, I rarely make the connection to its origins in Australia — or that it has its roots in quantum mathematics.

Invisibly connected to everything, I hardly know that it is there, until it isn’t.

Wi-Fi is a marvellous thing, powered by zillions of little black boxes joining everything to everything else.

Very small countries like Estonia, which has 1.3 million people and 1500 islands, don’t even need NBN cable networks costing billions like we do.

They can take a walk in an Estonian black forest and still, unfortunately, be connected to their social media fans at 14.8 megabits per second — because the whole country is covered.

Lithuania, too, is a moonshot more Wi-Fi capable than we are here, in the very country where it was invented.

The CSIRO didn’t do too badly out of it, raking in more than $430 million before its patents ran out, which just goes to show the value of being in two places at the one time.

If only our taxpayers had enjoyed the generous copyright protection writers get.

By the time Wi-Fi had caught on as a ‘thing’, the tech had become free for all, bringing the world a whole lot closer, but threatening to become a mutating monster (more of that soon).

I’m not saying that Wi-Fi will give you cancer of the soul or anything like that.

Life is much stranger than my imagination.

First, let me paint a picture in your mind of Wi-Fi radio waves being so thick they’re like water. Like a lake. Like an ocean. You’re in a yellow submarine in that ocean and you can talk to all the other submarines and ships on your special Wi-Fi radios. Got that? Now, imagine someone above you can see everything you do as your submarine displaces the water around you.

Sonar was invented in 1906 to track icebergs and was developed further by 1915 to locate submarines.

It works by bouncing sound waves off objects and then getting someone with headphones and very good hearing to sit and listen for echoes.

Because everything is connected to everything else, it should be no surprise to you that researchers with very good headphones can now scan your body from public Wi-Fi connections and see inside your clothes.

It reminds me of my childhood comics and the little dude on the back cover trying to sell me X-ray glasses.

Last week, I learned that I don’t need a dirty great X-ray machine to do that.

I just need Wi-Fi gear and I can detect what people are carrying in their bags while they jig about in a sea of invisible radio waves.

Scientists at Rutgers University (ranked in the world’s top 300 unis) announced their method in an exotically named paper, Towards In-baggage Suspicious Object Detection Using Commodity Wi-Fi, at a recent security conference.

Against a backdrop of surging domestic terrorism, they sought a cheap solution for stadiums, schools and railway stations using ‘off-the-shelf’ Wi-Fi boxes to detect weapons and bombs.

This, on paper, will definitely make the world a safer place.

The ingenious AI systems can classify dangerous items, including liquids, based on their signature, much like the different sounds a submarine makes on sonar equipment.

As the Sonar Operator’s Manual says: “Next in importance to the sonar operator are the noises from various pieces of machinery within the ship. These sounds go through the hull and out into the water.”

The stuff inside your clothes, inside your baggage has a signature that can be seen from outside, simply because the materials are displacing the Wi-Fi waves. Cool, huh? This idea will catch on quickly and be developed further.

Think shopping centres and all public spaces.

Think private spaces and hackers.

Think about the ability of nefarious outsiders to scan the contents of your home from your own Wi-Fi. Or the one from next door. All you need is a Wi-Fi transmitter and a receiver — and a bachelor degree in malevolence.