If data brokers can track the devices you take with you, they know where you live, where you go, and what you do. And the stakes are only poised to climb higher, now that surveillance companies that sell automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) are getting in on the game. Defense contractor Leonardo is promoting a new technology called SignalTrace that will package plate cameras with sensors that can scrape unique identifiers tied to your smart devices and make that data available to law enforcement.
A recent report by 404 Media dives into the objective of SignalTrace and how it’s being marketed to authorities. Police, border security, and other government agencies already comprise Leonardo’s customer base, and with this technology, those clients seek to correlate footage from these cameras to phones, tablets, wearables, AirTags, and, naturally, the electronics inside cars themselves.
If SignalTrace can pick up your Bluetooth headphones, you can be damn sure it’ll also be looking out for your vehicle’s 5G hotspot, infotainment system, and even its tire pressure monitoring sensors. Hell, the company includes pet microchips as a potential entry point to tracking.
The goal here, as 404 sums up, is to “bridge the gap between vehicle and occupant.” Previously, these cameras could track a car’s whereabouts at a given time. Throw in a glut of unique identifiers, though, and the job of tying an individual or multiple people to that vehicle becomes trivial—and not something anyone can simply opt out of.
Of course, ALPRs were already bad news; the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that the simple act of repeatedly capturing photos of cars in transit at multiple points of their journeys, day in and day out, was enough to establish someone’s “pattern of life” and even identify those they associate with.
Leonardo was granted the patent for the technology that underpins SignalTrace two years ago. A press release announcing the milestone concludes with a disclaimer that the company’s tech “captures device frequencies emitted into the air” and “does not decrypt or capture the contents of the devices or their communications.” That’s precisely how these firms are able to evade culpability for the surveillance they enable. Whether they’re cracking encryption or not, the results are the same.
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