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Wireless Networking Apple

Both Apple and Amazon Are Quietly Building Networks That Know the Location of Everything (wired.co.uk) 32

Posted by EditorDavid from the internet-of-tracked-things dept.
Wired reports on both Sidewalk, Amazon's new low-bandwidth long-range wireless networking protocol, and Apple's new position- and distance-measuring U1 chip (mentioned in a recent keynote). Apple's U1 chip -- which allows precise, indoor positional tracking via the latest iPhones and will power, at the very least, directional AirDrop file-sharing -- popped up on screen but was never even mentioned. The interest-piquing phrase "GPS at the scale of your living room" was saved for the online iPhone product pages rather than the bombast of the Steve Jobs Theater... Both Amazon and Apple have the hardware scale to build up the base of access points needed to create a useful network before reaching out to, most likely, iOS developers in Apple's case, and hardware makers already on board with Alexa in Amazon's case. For Amazon, in fact, that work has already begun as Sidewalk originally came out of the Ring team's ambition to extend its connected security devices out into gardens. "Ring lighting was the first time we ran into it as a company, because we wanted to extend out onto the sidewalk," says Daniel Rausch, VP of smart home at Amazon (which owns Ring).

The smart outoor Ring lights are already out. Products like the Smart Floodlight and Pathlight list a "wireless connection to the Ring Bridge" in the tech specs but eagle-eyed Ring owners had already started to figure out what band Amazon was playing with for this connection, before the Sidewalk announcement. "They've been using an internal version of the protocol on the freely available and unlicensed 900MHz part of the spectrum already," explains Rausch. "What we realised was 'woah, we can actually do something special'. We can make a version of this protocol which is secure and have this unbelievably ubiquitous coverage if we bring it all together, neighbours and neighbours and neighbours...." An innocent smart dog tracker like Ring Fetch fits perfectly into this model of Amazon-networked communities sharing video, alerts and location tracking.
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Both Apple and Amazon Are Quietly Building Networks That Know the Location of Everything More

Both Apple and Amazon Are Quietly Building Networks That Know the Location of Everything

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  • So, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 29, 2019 @01:43PM (#59250176)

    Who's selling a product to protect me from being stalked everywhere I go?

    Ubiquitous coverage shouldn't be a goal. 1984 was not a manual.

  • So, will I still be able to get the U1 chip optionally installed in my right hand or forehead? For, you know, the typical Apple fashion cachet?

    Theist or atheist, you have to find the implementation of "track everything, all the time" technology by a company named "Apple" to have a certain anachronistic irony.

    • Half of Youtube is convinced by now that all this tracking shit is "the mark of the Antichrist". So no, you are not the only soul wondering why a company with a deliberately Biblical symbol that was originally in rainbow colors - the bitten apple - is trying to shove its tracking tech into your daily existence. Apple's cult-like fanboys and Steve Jobs worshippers are like something strainght out of Revelations as well.

      • If anyone wants to find you by locating the phone In your pocket, this new tech offers no advantage over the Find My Phone tracking that has existed for years. It’s Bluetooth. Big Brother would have to be within thirty feet of you for this to be advantageous in finding you.

        What Apple seems to be headed for with this is you being able to use your phone to zero in on small objects you have applied special-purpose stickers to, like your keys or your TV remote. A third-party system called Tiles exists for

  • Another reason to never buy an iThing then. I suspect the wannabe one percenters will carry on though. They already pay the, ever rising, "gullibility tax" so we can see how smart they are!

    Amazon already have ny home address. I don't think they sell many phones and this may help keep it that way.

    • Another reason to never buy an iThing then. I suspect the wannabe one percenters will carry on though. They already pay the, ever rising, "gullibility tax" so we can see how smart they are!

      Amazon already have ny home address. I don't think they sell many phones and this may help keep it that way.

      Did you get that talking point from your Amazon Kindle or your Google Android phone? If it's the latter it would behoove you to remember that Google already has networks that know the location of everything, Amazon and Apple merely aspire to catch up with Google. You pay the "gullibility tax" every time you run a Google search, use G-mail, watch a YouTube clip or load a web page containing Google ads and marvel at how generous Google is to provide all this stuff for free.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Gonoff ( 88518 )

        Did you get that talking point from your Amazon Kindle or your Google Android phone?

        No

  • To paraphrase: They were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.

  • With the speak of internet providers becoming more cable-like (and cable-operators controlling the internet, zero-rating their own services and about to start charging extra for anything extra), perhaps these businesses are preparing mesh-networks across the cities.

    Add the newer security (HTTP2 / HTTPS everywhere, DNS over HTTPS), and there's some security if one device is cracked and made malicious.

    All they really need to do is put access point functionality into the ring doorbells and hook up to the alrea

  • I don’t like either companies’ approac (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @02:30PM (#59250350)

    But there are significant differences, and I worry more about Amazon’s approach of selling fear.

    I was listening to “This Week in Tech” recently, and Leo Laporte was extolling the awesomeness of Ring potentially providing an ID of everyone who comes to his door. He seems to be oblivious to the obvious issues related to data sharing and what is almost certainly going to be part of this - shared shadow profiles.

    Let’s say I’m one of Leo’s friends (I’m not, but anyway...). First time I come to his door, Ring catalogs a photo of my face. Leo attaches my name to it so that, in the future, Ring can tell him “Hey, 93 Escort Wagon is here” - probably without my knowledge or consent, but we’ll ignore that because I’m his friend and I’m at his house. But Ring is almost certainly intending to store that identification on its servers and then almost certainly going to make that ID available to other Ring owners (as well as the police and probably other agencies). I don’t like that sort of tracking on principle... but that could go from being a philosophical issue to a potential safety issue for some people.

    • They built it because the inner cities are heavily surveilled already - no privacy there - but there was no clever way to bring CCTV into residential areas like suburbs. So along comes Ring, the cool security device that sees what is going on in the suburbs AND is internet connected from the get go. Its a CCTV doorbell. When you install it, they don't have to put up a mast with rotary CCTV cameras anymore. Much cleaner looking way of surveilling millions of residential locations. Clever.

  • No Thank You. (Score:3)

    by bjwest ( 14070 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @02:51PM (#59250434)
    This is why I'll never have one of these Alexa/Ring/iWhatever devices in or on my home. Until it becomes illegal, too costly or otherwise unobtainable for me to have a dumb doorbell, light bulb and a roll-your-own assistant/smart home thingy, I'll keep doing it the way I'm doing it now. Who the fuck needs their light bulbs connected to the internet anyways? WTAF is wrong with you people?
    • I wonder sometimes whether all the wireless traffic that is in the air nowadays, in combination with 3rd rate TV programming, celebrity worship, low quality movies and terrible quality pop music makes consumers physiologically less smart than they would normally be. Has anyone run a global IQ test recently? Are the scores 50 points lower than 20 years ago?
  • For science-fiction purposes only, of course. Robotic control of a remote, high-powered weapon. Plug it in, turn it on and it'll be able to take out the target from 200+ yards away. Projectiles, directed energy, whatever. Now we just have to come up with a catchy name for it: Obliteron? Snuff-bot? Slaughter-bot? Assassinoid?

  • Apple's approach is relative location (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) on Sunday September 29, 2019 @04:39PM (#59250760)

    I think t's unfair to call what Apple is doing "knowing your location", when knowing you are exactly 84 CM from a phone is a fact outside of absolute location.

    Similarly with Bluetooth beacons, you can know with great accuracy when you are in range of a specific beacon but that too is relative unless someone has gone to the trouble of mapping its location.

    The U1 stuff will be really nice to be able to more accurately share information in a crowded space with a lot of phones, both people could easily have location tracking disabled and it will still work just fine.

  • OS, computers that are still under your control.
    That don't phone an ad company all day, everyday.
    Stop buying from ad brands.

  • Goo (Score:2)

    by dohzer ( 867770 )

    Not Google though, no siree!

  • I can think of nice uses for accurate location information in automating building construction tasks. I doubt Apple would be interested, though.

  • Oh, you mean "The Borg"
    Another part of Amazon's grand plan to take over the world. Join one of these any you will have 'sold your soul to the company store'.
    Sorry, I'll pass on that.

  • Ignorance is bliss (Score:3)

    by jtgd ( 807477 ) on Monday September 30, 2019 @02:27AM (#59251810)
    Are we approaching an age where most people have not read 1984??
  • I am looking forward to finding Nessie, Bigfoot (all variations), Atlantis, and my DVR remote.

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