On the subject of tracking, does anybody know of any current -on-the-market- security cameras that also do passive air / radio sniffing on things like WiFi and Bluetooth?
Imagine an appliance brick and mortar shop that gives users free WiFi. In the middle of the night, masked intruders burgle the place and steal $50,000 worth of goods. In addition to logging the (fairly useless) footage of masked people stealing stuff in the dark, the system also recorded some Bluetooth / WiFi beacons. If sufficient "fingerprinting" information can be collected from this data, it could become possible to look backwards for clues to who these users were in earlier collected data (say for example, when the assailants had previously scouted the store during the daytime making a plan).
Well, you can sniff wifi with any network card and driver that support promiscuous mode for the wireless standard you're interested in. For bluetooth, I have used the Ubertooth One [1]. Unfortunately the range is pretty short with this device... Radio sniffing in general is done with software defined radio (SDR). Three pieces of hardware I have used for this and can recommend are the RTL2832U [2] (ultra cheap, can honestly say its some of the most fun I've ever had for 20 bucks), HackRF One [3], and the USRP B200 [4]. I like using GNU Radio for signal processing.
I mention these because this type of equipment is very easy to acquire and that, even if there are no companies out there currently offering what you're suggesting, doing this type of radio surveillance (DIY or otherwise) would be fairly easy. Heck, you can even do really high res Van Eck phreaking with the USRP B200 quite easily [5]. You could look at the criminal's twitter feed if he was scrolling through it. :P
Replying to myself because I thought I should add that in no way do I think it would be ethical to use or building such a surveillance system. Especially one that employs Van Eck phreaking.
Just a game of cat and mouse, if that kind of thing became widespread, crooks would just leave their electronics at home while casing a potential site.
Most of the criminals are not _that_ careful. Among a group of 5, one might forget or have a reason to hide his phone from others because his child is sick and he is expecting a call, for example.
Would it matter though? When my house was burgled, the cops didn’t do a damn thing other than file the report. It’s seemingly not worth their time since “not enough money” was involved. We knew pretty well who did it as well. They only caught up with him once he did some very obvious things at grocery stores.
Wouldn’t that be the most amazing and scary hardware security startup, I briefly looked into adding that capability to my security system but didn’t find anything. I know mall some clothing stores have had that tech for years, for marketing purposes.
Imagine an appliance brick and mortar shop that gives users free WiFi. In the middle of the night, masked intruders burgle the place and steal $50,000 worth of goods. In addition to logging the (fairly useless) footage of masked people stealing stuff in the dark, the system also recorded some Bluetooth / WiFi beacons. If sufficient "fingerprinting" information can be collected from this data, it could become possible to look backwards for clues to who these users were in earlier collected data (say for example, when the assailants had previously scouted the store during the daytime making a plan).