Only a matter of time before there are handheld scanners that, Star Trek style, can do it. Or in the meantime, they use this tech at the entrance to schools, airports, government buildings...etc. etc.
You’ve seen the same sentiment spouted a hundred times in comment sections across the gun-0-sphere regarding allegedly gun-free zones; “Concealed means concealed,” or “What they don’t know won’t hurt them.” “No one needs to know if I’m carrying a gun,” and “I don’t pay attention to ‘no guns’ signs.”
Welp, that’s soon going to get much more difficult to pull off. In the immortal words of George Costanza, you can’t stop modern science. And AI-enabled technologies are accomplishing things heretofore never imagined.
Case in point: using Wi-Fi signals to tell if you’re packing heat. No more magnetometers or other fancy, whiz-bang detection equipment needed. A few of the mega-minds at something called the Swedish Defense Research Agency — apparently some sort of a Nordic DARPA — have devised a way to use already ubiquitous Wi-Fi signals in tandem with an AI model to tell with pretty good accuracy whether or not a person in a particular location is strapped.
It seems the signals bounce off of different objects in different, identifiable ways. Knowing that, the Swedish boffins recorded people using standard video while they were carrying everyday objects like phones, water bottles and…guns. Then they turned an AI package loose on the dataset, training it to recognize those various objects. As Tom’s Hardware reports . . .
After training, the final AI system, WiFireNet, could detect concealed handguns solely based on Wi-Fi CSI [channel state information], with varying accuracy. In controlled trials tracking up to four moving individuals in a small indoor space, the system achieved an average handgun-detection precision of 72.5%. However, under stricter localization requirements, such as pinpointing the weapon’s exact location on the carrier, precision dropped to 53.8%. The neural network also struggles to perform accurately in unfamiliar, untested indoor layouts.
Okay, so it’s not perfect. Yet. But the researchers were using an older Wi-Fi signal in their trials.
The prototype was built using a modified implementation of the older 1999 wireless IEEE 802.11a standard to establish proof of concept. Subsequent phases will use modern Wi-FI 7 and Wi-Fi 8 networks with higher-resolution CSI for better detection.
Oh joy. Not only that, but the Swedes aren’t keeping the technology proprietary.
The researchers made the project open source, releasing the code, models, and dataset to support further research in the field. Wi-Fi sensing is gaining popularity as an effective surveillance technology that doesn’t require complex gear or setups. However, critics argue that the technology’s ubiquity and the lack of regulatory frameworks raise serious privacy concerns.
Privacy concerns? You don’t say.
Look for this to be coming to restricted and prohibited locations near you. Facility and property owners will eventually have an apparently cheap, effective way to know exactly who is and isn’t complying with their “gun-free zone” signs.
And it won’t require dedicated or specially trained security people to monitor some kind of expensive, complicated system, either. When you walk into your local Costco with an M&P Shield under your shirt, an inconspicuous red light over the door will blink or someone will get a beep in their earpiece…and likely ask you to leave.
And don’t even get us started thinking about government types or other unscrupulous individuals hacking into your home Wi-Fi router to see what’s what. So get ready for the new reality. Like that other AI-enabled technology, it can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear…and it absolutely will not stop…ever.
Its pass time to do what must be done, everyone pushing this and gun control must go. But unfortunately most 2A supporters are too pussy to do it.