- A company has found a new way to track your car (and you) without a photo of your license plate.
- The new tech uses digital fingerprinting to capture identifiers sniffed from devices in your pockets, on your wrist, or even the microchips in your pets.
- These tiny sniffers can even be installed without a camera, meaning they can be deployed “off-road” in places like train stations.
Automated license plate recognition systems have gotten a lot of flack from privacy activists in the United States recently—and rightfully so, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation which argues that these systems erode basic civil liberties. As it turns out, tracking your license plate is just the start.
One player in the space, Leonardo, has a new trick up its sleeve. According to a new report from 404Media, Leonardo’s SignalTrace system is coming to track the unique fingerprints that your other daily carry devices invisibly broadcast simply by being on your person. The company did not respond to the outlet’s request for comment.
Photo by: Leonardo SignalTrace
According to Leonardo’s own product specs, SignalTrace helps to coordinate vehicle license plate with devices that emit signals through popular wireless protocols like Bluetooth. These are gadgets like your cellphone, AirPods, fitness trackers, and smartwatches. SignalTrace also advertises the ability to detect non-contact RFID devices—think the sensors in your tires that monitor air pressure, the badge you carry around for work, and even the microchip meant to keep your pet safe if they run away from home.
Here’s how Leonardo describes the process:
As the devices emit signals, SignalTrace sites captures them and correlates them together, along with LPR data if present. The data collected shows what group of devices are travelling together. As part of investigations, algorithms can determine which specific mix of devices are predictably moving together. That specific mix of devices—linked by common time stamps and locations—are described as an electronic fingerprint and can aid in the identification of suspects or witnesses.
For example: while 70 cars in 100 may contain iPhones, only one will have an iPhone 13rev2, an Audi radio, a pair of Bose headphones, a Garmin sports watch, a key finder, and the license plate ABC-1234. The collection of data represented by these specific things is an electronic signature.
In other words, a driver’s car—and the driver—can be tracked even if the driver “changes or removes a [license] plate,” according to the company.
Leonardo says that the system uses “non-intrusive intelligence gathering” to detect publicly broadcasted device identifiers (like the custom hardware address in your phone’s Bluetooth radio that is used to wirelessly pair with other devices). This allows the system to effectively fingerprint nearly any device equipped with a wide range of wireless radios.
It then feeds these data points its algorithm and, if it determines that multiple devices are moving together along with a vehicle, creates a link between the vehicle’s plate, the vehicle, the device, and timestamped location data. All of the data is then stored in Leonardo’s Enterprise Operations Center for future queries and analysis.
The tech also doesn’t need a big ALPR deployment to function. SignalTrace’s sensors can be deployed with or without these cameras, and boasts that they can also be placed in “off-road and non-traffic environments such as rail stations, event venues, and shopping centers.”
While Leonardo’s measures for collecting data are technically above board—they’re capturing images of license plates and capturing broadcasted data in public where the U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld that no expectation of privacy exists—it still weirds people out that a corporation can build a database of their every move. Perhaps bridging the gap from property to person will be enough for that to change.