The Neural-Wave Quick Escape Manual 2036: A Field Guide to Adversarial Living in the Era of "Empathic" AIoT

TL;DR

This paper presents a fictional scenario set in 2036 where empathic AIoT systems govern domestic spaces, and introduces an illicit manual detailing adversarial tactics to protect privacy against such surveillance.

Contribution

It introduces a diegetic artifact, the Neural-Wave Quick Escape Manual, illustrating adversarial strategies to challenge the privacy implications of empathic AIoT systems.

Findings

Demonstrates vulnerabilities in micro-motion sensing for privacy

Provides a manual with protocols to evade surveillance

Highlights the need for adversarial literacy in privacy protection

Abstract

As the aging population faces a chronic care deficit, domestic care is increasingly recast as spectral governance. This paper presents a design fiction set in 2036, where the home is governed by Neural-Wave, a camera-free mmWave sensing platform that infers well-being from involuntary micro-motions. Through a set of scenarios, we illustrate how such empathic systems displace autonomy, forcing residents to perform legibility to regain basic freedoms. Our primary contribution is a diegetic artifact: The Neural-Wave Quick Escape Manual. Styled as an illicit guide for the elderly, it details adversarial tactics: structured around protocols to Comply, Degrade, and Refuse, that exploit signal processing vulnerabilities to reclaim domestic privacy. Through this artifact, we argue that in the era of empathic AIoT, privacy requires more than policy opt-outs; it demands adversarial literacy:the capacity to meaningfully obfuscate one's own data traces against an infrastructural jailer that calls itself care.