A new version of the Wi-Fi standard, 802.11bf, is planned to standardize their use as spy devices to track people's movements through walls. The designers have reportedly not yet turned their minds to the questions of "privacy and security" for this capability.

When they do, if they follow the usual bad conceptions, they will interpret "privacy" as "protecting the collected data from use unauthorized by the business that controls them", and "security" as meaning "security against third parties, not against the manufacturer or ISP."

And if they implement any way to turn this capability off, I fear that it will be under software control — and that it will be an excuse to to require nonfree software in every Wi-Fi interface, just where you really shouldn't trust it.

What the standard needs is a way to build Wi-Fi interface hardware that is hardware-limited to communication and can't do any tracking. Every ordinary Wi-Fi device should be hardware-limited to communication.

The devices that are not hardware-limited to communication should be special models, which you won't have in your house unless you know that's what you want. They should not do any communication themselves. That way, if you do have one, you'll be able to control who it communicates with.

It would be good to require these devices to have a geofence: no tracking anything outside of a certain boundary. It should be legally required for the installer of such a device to configure the geofence at the boundary of your own apartment. Installing them such that they can track outside of a private place should be a crime as well.

Or perhaps it would be better not to approve this standard and not make such tracker devices.