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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
One of the new chips in this year’s crop of iPhones is the U1; it provides Ultra Wideband (UWB) connectivity that, in conjunction with Internet of Things (IoT) technology, could offer a myriad of new services for enterprises and consumers.
As Apple puts it, UWB technology offers “spatial awareness" – the ability for your phone to recognize its surroundings and the objects in it. Essentially, one iPhone 11 user can point his or her phone at another and transfer a file or photo.
While the technology isn't new, Apple’s implementation marks the first time UWB has been used in a modern smartphone.
UWB is a short-range, wireless communication protocol that – like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi – uses radio waves. But it differs substantially in that IT operates at a very high frequency. As its name denotes, it also uses a wide spectrum of several GHz. One way to think of it is as a radar that can continuously scan an entire room and precisely lock onto an object like a laser beam to discover its location and communicate data.
In the early 2000s, UWB saw limited use in military radars and covert communications and was used briefly as a form of medical imaging, such as remote heart monitoring systems; Its adoption lagged until recently when commercial interests began exploring potential uses.
Today, its primary purpose is expected to be location discovery and device ranging, according to Phil Solis, an IDC research director. While both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth have been modified to allow greater accuracy in locating other devices and connecting to them, UWB is natively more precise, uses less power and, as production of UWB chips ramps up over time, holds the promise of a lower price point.
Samsung, Apple and Huawei, the world’s largest smartphone makers, are all involved in UWB projects including chip and antenna production, according to Solis. Apple, however, is the first to actually deploy it in a phone.
Samsung, along with Xiaomi, NXP, Sony, Bosch and others, are also a part of the FiRa (fine ranging) Consortium, which is working to grow the UWB ecosystem. That ecosystem is built atop the existing IEE 802.15.4/4x standard for low-data-rate wireless communication.
A UWB transmitter works by sending billions of pulses (UWB was previously known as “pulse radio”) across the wide spectrum frequency; a corresponding receiver then translates the pulses into data by listening for a familiar pulse sequence sent by the transmitter. Pulses are sent about one every two nanoseconds, which helps UWB achieve its real-time accuracy.
UWB is extremely low power but the high bandwidth (500MHz) is ideal for relaying a lot data from a host device to other devices up to about 30 feet away. Unlike Wi-Fi, however, it is not particularly good at transmitting through walls.
“Because it’s such high frequency, it’s very much line of sight,” said Jack Gold, principal analyst at J. Gold Associates. “So, the advantage is because it has such wide bandwidth, it has a lot of data capability. If you’re transmitting a 60GHz signal that’s 500MHz wide… and multiply that by however many channels you can do, you’re talking very wide band.”
To increase UWB’s range and reception reliability, a MIMO (multiple-input and multiple-output), distributed antenna system has been added to the standard that enables short-range networks. The antennas can be embedded into a smartphone or other devices such as a wristband or smart key.
When a smartphone with UWB (like the latest iPhone) comes close to another UWB device, the two start ranging, or measuring, their exact distance. The ranging is accomplished through “Time of Flight” (ToF) measurements between the devices; these are used to calculate the roundtrip time of challenge/response packets.
Based on the IEEE 802.15.4a standard, UWB can determine the relative position of peer devices with line of sight at up to 200 meters, according to the FiRa Consortium. The Consortium is currently adding a security extension – specified in IEEE 802.15.4z – to make it a “secure fine-ranging technology.”
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @10:33AM (2 children)
With this technology no one in technological society will be able to hide, because not only will they have video feeds of your modements they will also have devices relaying back every object a device passes. It may not come today, but it is COMING SOON!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday January 07 2020, @01:49AM (1 child)
It's a technology that's so immediately useful and obviously practical that Apple have to plant an incredibly long-winded story just to tell you why you need to buy a new phone that has it.
(Score: 4, Funny) by lentilla on Tuesday January 07 2020, @02:29AM
Those clever boffins at Apple discovered this inexplicable void in their new prototype; about 3.5mm wide and 15mm long; so they decided to fill it with something useful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by pkrasimirov on Monday January 06 2020, @10:34AM (5 children)
The companies add more and more sensors to the pocket gods like the privacy concerns do not exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @11:04AM (3 children)
Do they actually?
'Cause apart from a minority of old grumpy geezers, I'd rather think all the others are more interested in putting their life on display.
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Monday January 06 2020, @11:18AM
https://twitter.com/eff/status/983078921036951552 [twitter.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Bot on Monday January 06 2020, @04:39PM
Privacy is not the amount of things you make public. It is about the amount of things YOU WANT to make public. In this regard youngsters are as concerned as geezers. Only they have not been bitten in the ass yet.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by VacuumTube on Monday January 06 2020, @04:53PM
"Do they actually?
'Cause apart from a minority of old grumpy geezers, I'd rather think all the others are more interested in putting their life on display."
I agree, but the real concern is not so much exposure of personal information, but what's being done with it using data analytics.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @11:12AM
This ride ain't over until we can fit Artilects into our pockets.
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday January 06 2020, @12:28PM (7 children)
Lots of hype, but not much in the way of quantifiable performance.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @12:46PM
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @02:16PM (1 child)
Not sure how complete this is, but at least some numbers: https://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia/term/53599/uwb [pcmag.com]
(Score: 2) by Rupert Pupnick on Monday January 06 2020, @05:00PM
Thanks for the link, though it has all tech detail of a 5G spec, which is to say not much.
I agree with the comments to the effect that this is for the benefit of advertisers since the (observable) impact on end users will be nil.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday January 06 2020, @03:30PM (3 children)
Performance for who? Advertisers will pay quite handsomely for this information, and don't even care if it's sometimes wrong.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @05:45PM (2 children)
I would bet the advertisers _do_ care if the spying info is wrong, but they don't want to spend money verifying it. We know the sellers surely don't care.
For 20+ years I've thought the best way to thwart the spying is to clog the system with misinformation, errors, conflicting information, turn phones OFF, leave them home, delete cookies often, don't ever get a google account, etc.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday January 06 2020, @07:28PM (1 child)
If you're paying for 10,000,000 impressions of ads to people who ate cereal with their family this morning, you don't care that you got 500,000 where the computer mistook a sad lonely loser with a cat for your demo.
Advertisers care abstractly about accuracy in that they want "reach" to target demographics. They don't care about also spamming non-targets occasionally. That our dystopia is half-assed doesn't bother anyone tabulating sales numbers for a living.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Monday January 06 2020, @08:44PM
Well written and I agree.
I was thinking more about the company who is gathering the data and guaranteeing its accuracy to advertisers who buy the data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @02:04PM
It looks like they have radio technology searching for an application.
That's what the app store is for, so why not provide more general purpose hardware and see what happens.
Doesn't have to start complicated, how about a simple app to open the garage door?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Monday January 06 2020, @08:18PM
I believe it is already here. I have seen it confirmed from 5 independent angles now with this. This looks like soft disclosure of surveillance that is already happening.
-saw a tip on the chans about reflectors
-jacob appelbaum convincer about reflectors providing imaging described in snowden archives, in one of his talks. I do not trust him at all, but this is in one of his videos i think from 2013, likely video unavailable a this point but i saw it, i think the south africa talk.
-in all of my encounters with undercovers and entrapment setups, I have never seen a microphone or camera.
-then this spicy tidbit allegedly from game developer who is using imaging to manipulate people into microtransactions through body language interpretation which interacts with the game https://archive.is/KgdJz [archive.is]
-now this, phones have 'spatial' awareness.
Also, to me it just seems like something tptp would spend infininte time and money on, how to use emf as radar.
In which case we do not even need to be locked in nutrient baths for the matrix to exist, it will work just fine for your apartment.
Also Winston was wrong the whole time, he thought the tv had a camera. But no, he was just bathed in emf that reflected everything he did back to minluv.
And now this is in the hands of the kushners and stephen miller, and epstein.
Talk about totalitarian, this is shameless. They must really see us as cows and like watching us with our close off.
What if snowden had revealed that, with two handheld devices someone can see into every house, every apartment from a mile away? How would that change your worldview?
Obligatory:
https://archive.is/HTALt [archive.is]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06 2020, @09:50PM
Maybe the phone sucks, but 60 GHz is in fact particularly good at transmitting through walls.
I have a relative who was a technician for gyrotron tubes, some of which operated at 60 GHz. (could go lower, or up to 300 GHz even)
The tubes would be a bit large and power-hungry for an iPhone, but they penetrate walls just fine. A suitable gyrotron tube is about 12 feet tall, sitting in a tank of liquid helium that is about 4 feet in diameter. (in feet because these are American tubes, fuck yeah!) The beam is 2 to 4 inches in diameter, leaving the tube through a window made of man-made diamond. Oh yeah, a powerful and undesired beam of X-rays shoots out at a right angle to the 60 GHz beam, sorry.
Power levels reach at least 60 megawatts. This is enough to penetrate walls. Even concrete walls can be quickly penetrated.
(Score: 2) by jasassin on Monday January 06 2020, @11:26PM (1 child)
Could people get a video out of this like the Batman movie where he sees with bat radar vision and things are all blue? Imagine the privacy nightmare of that. Even turning the lights off wouldn't stop it. It'll film you masturbating in the dark! Watch out celebrity iPhone owners!
Bah, it probably won't work anyway... and Apple will just say you're pointing it the wrong way.
jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 07 2020, @02:45AM
That's to be expected if you're pointing it so you end up with jizz all over the phone.