Who wants X-Ray vision? Remember when that superpower was limited to our superheroes and villains? Soon, people like you can have x-ray vision.
It can track people using radio signals. This tracking can be put in your smartphones, video game consoles and health care systems. Scientists at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) are building systems that beam out human radio waves. Receivers pick up reflections. They’re processed by algorithms and map people’s live movements. This system of radio systems and wavelengths can travel through walls. This is how you get the x-ray vision. This system is called RF-Capture. Researchers at MIT brag about how they can identify 15 people walking through a wall. One MIT Ph.D. says you can look at a person from the inside out…literally. Not only can you detect them through walls, you can see their heart rate and breathing rate. They say RF-Capture will help build better games, especially ones where you play with your whole body, and not just with a controller. MIT isn’t the only institution interested in RF-Capture tracking technology. Earlier this month, they had a?SIGGRAPH Asia conference in Japan. One of the highlights was using radio waves 1,000 times greater than WiFi, to improve RF-Capture technology.
Scientifically, this is unprecedented. They’re accomplishing things that I use to think could only be done in sci-fi movies. But I’m concerned about the social ramifications. Government agencies around the world could use RF-Capture to track every move you make every second of the day, even what goes on in your bathroom and bedroom. Not only that, anybody with a smartphone could track your every move with RF-Capture. This includes nosy friends and family members, crazy exes, disgruntle workers and bosses, and overall criminals and psychopaths. They can know your every move. Yes, superheroes used x-ray vision to beat the bad guys. But this isn’t a movie, and we don’t even know who the bad guys are. So do you trust RF-Capture, or better yet, do you trust those who will use RF-Capture?