License plate cameras will soon track phones, wearables, infotainment, and even your pets



Those license plate cameras hanging over highways and intersections are no longer just reading plates.

New technology now allows some of them to detect the electronic devices traveling with you: your phone, smartwatch, Bluetooth headphones, infotainment system, AirTags, and even some pet trackers.

Collect enough data points, and it becomes possible to identify where someone works, where they live, and who they regularly travel with.

In other words, the goal is no longer simply to identify your car. It's to identify you. And most drivers have no idea this capability already exists.

Easy reader

Most Americans are familiar with Automatic License Plate Readers. Police departments, toll authorities, and private companies have used them for years. They photograph license plates, log the time and location, and store that information in massive databases.

These systems were originally sold as tools to find stolen vehicles and assist in Amber Alerts. But the databases have grown enormously, storing billions of scans and increasingly being used for purposes far beyond their original mission. Civil liberties groups have been raising concerns about that expansion for years.

According to Flock Safety, one of the largest providers of these systems, its cameras capture multiple frames of video and use motion detection to identify vehicles. The company says it does not use facial recognition technology and that its cameras are not designed to identify individuals.

Yet that distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

ALPR cameras use optical character recognition technology to convert license plate images into digital text and compare that information against databases of vehicles of interest. Increasingly, however, the cameras are doing much more than simply reading plates.

Electronic fingerprint

Now, here's where things get serious.

A defense contractor called Leonardo has been promoting a system called SignalTrace. It turns license plate cameras into advanced vehicle-tracking technology by combining plate information with signals transmitted by nearby electronic devices.

Even if you never gave permission for anyone to access your phone, smartwatch, Bluetooth devices, or your vehicle's Wi-Fi system.

SignalTrace is essentially an add-on sensor that can be attached to existing license plate cameras. Instead of simply reading a plate, it searches for wireless signals coming from nearby devices: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, and other identifiers.

Drive past one of these systems and it may detect the electronic signatures coming from your phone, smartwatch, Bluetooth headphones, infotainment system, AirTags, tire-pressure sensors, or other connected devices.

The system then links those electronic identifiers to a license plate. Leonardo calls this your "electronic fingerprint."

In plain English, the goal is to connect vehicles with the electronic devices and people associated with them.

May the Fourth be with you

According to documentation referenced by multiple publications, SignalTrace isn't limited to roadside cameras. The technology can also be deployed in parking garages, transportation hubs, event venues, and other public locations where wireless devices are present.

That means these systems can continue gathering information even when a vehicle isn't the primary focus.

This raises two obvious questions.

First: Who controls the information about where you go and what devices you carry with you?

And second: How much of this surveillance is consistent with Americans' expectations of privacy?

Privacy advocates argue that technologies like this raise serious Fourth Amendment concerns because they allow governments to collect detailed information about people's movements and associations without individualized suspicion or a warrant.

Modern problems

That debate is only becoming more important as vehicles themselves become increasingly connected.

Modern cars already collect enormous amounts of information, including location data, driving behavior, route histories, voice commands, vehicle diagnostics, and in some cases information gathered through interior cameras and driver-monitoring systems.

Critics worry that systems like SignalTrace add yet another layer to an already expanding data ecosystem.

Most drivers don't realize that they don't fully control much of the information their vehicles generate. Manufacturers often determine who can access that data, whether it can be shared, and how long it is retained.

Now, layer SignalTrace on top of all that.

Not only can manufacturers collect information from connected vehicles, but external surveillance systems may now be able to detect the devices you bring into the car and tie those identifiers directly to your license plate.

Over time, that creates a remarkably detailed picture of your movements and routines.

RELATED: The latest 'solution' to reckless driving could limit freedom for all of us

United Archives/Getty Images

Pattern of life

Privacy experts often refer to this as "pattern of life" surveillance. Collect enough data points, and it becomes possible to identify where someone works, where they live, who they regularly travel with, and even sensitive locations they frequently visit.

Leonardo says the technology captures identifiers and frequencies, not the contents of calls or messages. That may be technically true. But once detailed information exists inside a database, history shows that its use often expands over time.

So what does this mean for ordinary drivers?

It means the privacy expectations many Americans still have on public roads may be changing quickly.

It means the data ecosystem surrounding your vehicle is becoming larger and more interconnected.

And it means lawmakers need to have serious conversations about who can collect this information, how long it can be stored, and what can be done with it.

I'm not saying every police department will abuse these capabilities tomorrow. But once the technology exists and the infrastructure is already in place, the temptation to use it more broadly becomes very real.

We've seen that happen with other surveillance tools.

Protect yourself

So what can you do right now?

  • First, familiarize yourself with your vehicle's privacy and data settings. Many cars allow you to disable certain forms of data sharing or location tracking.
  • Second, be mindful of Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. If you're not using them, consider turning them off. These are precisely the types of signals systems like SignalTrace are designed to detect.
  • Third, if you use AirTags, fitness trackers, or pet trackers, understand that those devices can also become part of your electronic footprint.
  • Fourth, when you sell or trade your vehicle, factory-reset the infotainment system and remove all paired devices. Many people leave enormous amounts of personal information behind without realizing it.
  • Finally, support serious data-privacy legislation and efforts to give consumers greater control over the information their vehicles generate.

Because technologies like this rarely arrive with a major announcement.

They appear quietly in police budgets, vendor contracts, and infrastructure projects.

And by the time most people notice, the system is already in place.

Bottom line: Your car is supposed to work for you, not the other way around. When surveillance systems start linking your license plate to the devices you carry every day, it's worth paying attention — and asking some hard questions before these technologies become the new normal.

I’ll keep watching this space and bringing you updates as more departments adopt or test these systems. And I’ll let you know about the wins too.

If you’re wondering, “Where are all these cameras?” you will be shocked. Check out websites like deflock.org, an open-source project mapping license plate readers. Or look on eyesonflock.com, an aggregating Flock Safety Transparency Portal data, and haveibeenflocked.com, where you can enter your plate number to find out more.

YES, your phone is spying on you, RFK Jr. confirms



Many people worry that their smart technology, despite being incredibly efficient, is spying on them. Apple, Google, Meta, and other mega tech corporations guarantee privacy and security, but how effective are these so-called protection measures?

According to presidential candidate RFK. Jr., not very.

On top of privacy concerns, many are also deeply unnerved by the mass censorship we’ve seen, especially since the Biden administration took office.

“Do you ever feel that we're too deep in it now in some ways to reverse some of the effects of the censorship and what we learned from the Twitter files and the algorithmic tricks?” asks Dave Rubin.

“We can't really afford to be at war right now with Russia and in these kinds of conflicts with China and even Iran,” said RFK Jr. “We need to be sitting down with each other and figuring out how to control AI, and we cannot chase AI out of this country. We cannot make this a hostile environment for AI because superintelligence is coming; it’s terrifying, but we better have it better here than anybody else if we want to protect our national security because if we don't, we're going to be owned by somebody else.”

“We have this kind of turn-key totalitarianism that is waiting there in the wings,” he continued. “If a bad dictator took over, you know, now they’ve got AI [and] GPS that's following you everywhere.” Even “your cell phone is listening to your conversations and recording them and knows everything about you.”

He then tells a story that will likely resound with many. One time, he and his wife were discussing buying a new mattress, and by the next morning, they both had “three mattress ads on [their] phones.”

“It's not just the mattress company who's listening to you; it's the NSA who’s storing all these conversations,” he explains, “so it is terrifying, but I think there are, if we get smart people in a room, like Elon, there are things that we can do to at least mitigate the intrusive impacts and the controlling capacity of this new surveillance technology.”


Want more from Dave Rubin?

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The Dark Side of AI: Uncovering Artificial Intelligence Risks | Stu Does America Ep. 679
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The Dark Side of AI: Uncovering Artificial Intelligence Risks | Stu Does America Ep. 679

The FBI conducted millions of warrantless searches on Americans' data last year, new report shows



The Federal Bureau of Investigation conducted as many as 3.4 million searches on Americans' electronic data last year without a warrant, U.S. intelligence officials said Friday, according to the Wall Street Journal.

The data was disclosed as a part of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence's Annual Statistical Transparency Report. Yet while the report is regularly issued every year, the search disclosure is new.

In fact, it marks the first time that a U.S. intelligence agency has published the number of times the FBI has accessed Americans' data using Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a program passed into law in the years following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks to enable the U.S. to spy on non-Americans overseas.

The National Security Agency uses Section 702 to collect intelligence from international correspondence that it thinks may be connected to a security risk, however, sometimes Americans' data gets picked up in the process. From there the FBI taps into the data to look at U.S. information.

In its report, the Journal noted the revelation will very likely stoke "longstanding concerns in Congress about government surveillance and privacy."

It comes at a pertinent time, as well. Section 702 is up for renewal at the end of the year, and privacy advocates will be eager to highlight the 3.4 million searches figure in an effort to seek its termination.

Dustin Volz, a Washington D.C.-based reporter who covers cybersecurity and intelligence, was careful to note in the article that intelligence officials are not suggesting the searches were in any way improper or illegal, no matter how nefarious the practice may sound.

Rather, officials assert that the FBI's ability to conduct searches using the program remains an extremely important part of its mission to protect the country from threats to its national security.

Futhermore, Biden administration officials told the Wall Street Journal that the total number of searches is likely far lower than 3.4 million due to remarkable difficulties in counting and sorting the data. For example, each time an individual’s name, phone number, email address, or social security number is queried, it counts as one search.

Still, officials have acknowledged that the massive number published in the report is likely to raise alarms.

"[It] is certainly a large number," a senior FBI official reportedly said Friday in a press release about the report. "I am not going to pretend that it isn’t."

A battle over whether or not to renew the program is all but certain.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.), a staunch privacy advocate, told the Journal, "For anyone outside the U.S. government, the astronomical number of FBI searches of Americans’ communications is either highly alarming or entirely meaningless."

"Somewhere in all that over-counting are real numbers of FBI searches, for content and for noncontent — numbers that Congress and the American people need before Section 702 is reauthorized," he added.