Imagine that you share a ride to work with the same colleague most mornings. As it passes by a license plate reader, the camera records the car, which can be linked through vehicle records to its registered owner. Beside it, another sensor detects signals broadcast by devices traveling nearby, such as your phone and your colleague’s smartwatch.
After enough trips, software may treat some of those devices as a recurring electronic signature associated with the vehicle. Weeks later, one of the same device signals appears alongside a different car connected to an investigation. The signal itself may not contain its owner’s name, but its previous association with a known vehicle gives investigators another clue they can use to work out who was carrying the device.
SignalTrace, a system marketed by the security company Leonardo, is designed to work alongside automatic license plate readers. The company says it can recognize groups of consumer devices that regularly move together, then associate them with license plate records and time-stamped locations. The pattern can then be searched even when a police investigator does not know the plate number.
Turn your damn phone off, leave it at home, smash it with an anvil, whatever. If you must carry it, put it in airplane mode, turn off your location services, sign out of your google account and then stuff it in a quality faraday bag. Resistance is NOT futile.
Unless of course you LIKE being spied on and tracked by private companies and your government, which of course is only here to help you.
Oh, and if you’re worried about someone not being able to find you in case you drive off the road and down an embankment, I have a better idea… take an advanced driving course and keep your eyes on the road.
2 responses to “New surveillance tech links your phone to your license plate”
I’ve been going back and forth with some folks (I’m trying to be kind) on the local Facebook group for my community about Flock surveillance cameras. It is amazing to me how many don’t care that these cameras are becoming ubiquitous. When attempting to explain the potenial for nefarous actions using the data captured by AI, and the fact that numerous LEO’s in various cities and states are getting fired for abuse, many say “‘Meh’, our smarphones are already recording everything anyway!”
I don’t know if it is burnout by many with all that is going on, normalcy bias, cognitive dissonance, or just plain stupid, uninformed sheep!
I’ve seen the same sort of thing and been baffled as well. My kids, too, I was talking to them about eMail surveillance, and surprised they’ve simply accepted it happens. No big deal, they never had an expectation of privacy.
There it it….
If you told me the USPS was opening every letter, making a copy, sticking it in a file somewhere’s dated and catalogued, just in case, then sealing the envelope back up and sending it on it’s way to me, I would be beyond livid. My own children have zero expectation of that kind of privacy, so when theirs is violated, they don’t see it as a problem.
This is why I say things like “we are beyond F*cked”. Orwell is complete. Some animals ARE more equal than others. And you mention that, and nobody knows what you’re talking about, because nobody reads those authors any more. That’s how we got here. Newspeak in action (another one they don’t read, wonder why?)
This is where I say “we’re beyond….”