Not Just License Plates: They’re Going to Track So Much More

Welcome once again to Leato's Law.

Here's Steve Leato.

>> The surveillance state is expanding. A

lot of people sent me this story and

I've talked before about, for instance,

flock cameras. Flock cameras, the

cameras that are just out there and they

record cars they go by and they make a

note of what type of car it is and the

license plate on the car. And some

people say, you know, who cares if

they're just recording when I drive by

in my car? And I pointed out that my

primary concern is that it's just one

step down that long road towards the

complete surveillance state which we

don't want to live in where everything

we do is tracked by somebody else. So a

lot of people sent me a story and said

Steve check this out and it's been

widely reported. The version I've got

here from the drive.com license plate

cameras will soon track phones,

wearables, infotainment, and possibly

even your pets. So, Adam Ismail wrote

this and it's a new kind of license

plate reading camera that will also

scrape the smart devices that you have

with you and wrap all that data into a

nice little bow for law enforcement and

the government. So, 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 are

getting in on the game. So, defense

contractor is promoting a new technology

called signal trace 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. So, here's

the car and and here's what's in the

car. A recent report by 404 media dives

into the objective of this business and

this uh product and how it's being

marketed to authorities. Police, border

security, and other government agencies

already comprise the customer base of

the company. And with this technology,

those clients seek to correlate footage

from these cameras to phones, tablets,

wearables, Air Tags, and naturally the

electronics inside cars themselves. If

uh this can pick up your Bluetooth

headphones, you can be damn sure it'll

also be able to look out for your

vehicle's 5G hotspot, your infotainment

system, and even tire pressure

monitoring sensors. Like we talked about

smart tires coming to your cars. Uh

maybe they can pick that up, too. The

company includes pet microchips as a

potential entry point to tracking. And

by the way, this is a lot of the the

information here is coming from a press

release issued by the company itself. So

I'll get to that in a moment.

The goal here, as 404 points out, is to

bridge the gap between vehicle and

occupant. Previously, the cameras

tracked the car's whereabouts, but you

throw in a glut of unique identifiers,

and the job of tying an individual or

particular people to that vehicle

becomes trivial and not something that

you can opt out of. Of course, the

license plate readers were already bad

news as the EFF found that the simple

act of repeatedly capturing photos of

cars and transit at multiple points in

their journeys day in and day out was

enough to establish someone's pattern of

life and even identify those they

associate with. So, the company was

granted a patent for the technology that

underpins this process. And it happened

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. So they're saying,

"Look, we're not going to be able to

hear what you're saying on the phone.

It's just the presence of the phone." So

that's precisely these firms are able to

evade culpability for their

surveillance. Whether they're cracking

encryption or not, the results are the

same. So, from the press release that

was issued after the patent was granted,

the company refers to his groundbreaking

software technology and uh it's an

electronic detection system designed to

help law enforcement identify people of

interest by the signatures their

electronic devices emit such as fitness

trackers, RFID tags, and local signals

from mobile phones. And one sentence

that I spotted that I'm not sure anybody

else caught or really focused on is that

down towards the bottom of the press

release, there's some bullet points and

it goes features and benefits of this

system. And the bottom one is effective

for use in off-road areas such as rail

stations and shopping centers.

Now,

the reason that gets my attention is

that there's large areas within rail

stations and large areas within shopping

centers

where there are not going to be license

plate readers.

So, the implication here is that this is

not just tied to license plate readers.

I don't think it sounds to me like

they're saying, "Well, look, our

technology can be deployed all over the

place. Wherever there are people that

law enforcement might want to track, we

can track them. And whether it involves

a car or license plate, no. So, whatever

these devices are going to wind up

looking like, they might be tied to a

license plate reader, they might not be.

And so if you're walking through a

shopping center, like say a mall, if

those exist in the future,

uh you're walking through a mall and on

you you've got your wearable devices,

your cell phone, whatever else you might

have, uh if you've been chipped by your

owner, um

they they they can pick that stuff up,

too. Now, what it'll be tied to because

it won't be tied to a car, I don't know.

But suddenly you realize that this

technology does not have to be tied to a

license plate reader. Now, of course, if

it's tied to a license plate reader and

they take all this data and associate it

with this car, that's a great, you know,

point where you can file all the

information, but it sounds to me like

they're already thinking. And don't get

me wrong, patents often include the most

expansive thinking you've ever seen. So,

if a company patents an invention and

they list all of the things it can do,

they'll often throw in a bunch of stuff

that it may or may not ever be able to

do, but they're covering themselves. I

understand that. However, here it very

well could be that they're going to say,

"Well, we'll have the license plate

readers that also pick up all this extra

information tied to license plate." But

if somebody really wants to, they can

get the reader without the license plate

portion of it and we'll stick it in a

mall or a train station or someplace

where people congregate and that way we

can track all the information about

somebody uh and it wouldn't necessarily

be tied to a car, but we'd have the

information anyway. So, uh I am deeply

concerned. I'm a big advocate for

privacy. Um, and I know there are people

out there go, "But Steve, if this stuff

makes us safer, if this stuff makes us

safer, and you got to you got to always

ask yourself, you know, about the things

that can go wrong. What what what could

go wrong? I don't have to say what could

possibly go wrong. We can see what can

go wrong here. And we've had the

stories. We've had the stories about,

for instance, the police officer who's

got a crush on a woman or or or maybe

they were dating, but she decided to

stop dating him. And he's kind of

wondering, I wonder what she's doing

tonight.

Great song, by the way. And and instead

of just thinking about it, listening to

a song by Boyce and Hart, he decides to

figure it out. I wonder what she's doing

tonight. I can go look it up. See if her

plates have popped up on those license

plate readers. Oh, she's over here.

She's over there. Oh my gosh, her car

goes over there. That's where the other

guy lives.

And so the abuse is, and by the way,

that's that's a trivial abuse compared

to the other stuff's out there. But

that's something people can relate to

because they understand that, oh,

if they can do that, what else can they

do? Oh, they can do all kinds of stuff.

So, I'm not a fan of the license plate

readers. I'm not a fan of this

technology. And I'm concerned that as we

go about our lives in the future, more

and more we're going to be tracked,

observed,

and it's not just law enforcement. It's

not going to be just law enforcement.

Uh, we're going to start getting like

targeted ads, which we've already been

getting, but we're going be getting them

based on where we go. So, you're going

to drive someplace and drive past a

store and later on that afternoon you

get an ad from that store saying, "Hey,

next time you drive by, swing in and buy

something." What are the odds that I got

that the day I drove by the store? What

are the odds? Oh,

wasn't a coincidence. It was just very

very specific marketing. And and that

that is going to happen. That will

happen. Uh uh and I know it's already

happening on some level. It's going to

get worse. And so

I'm not sure what we can do about this

other than when you hear that your local

municipality, town, village, city,

whatever it might be where you live,

when they start discussing bringing in

this kind of equipment to track the

citizens,

uh if you're concerned, perhaps show up

at one of those public meetings and

speak your mind because I've now seen

examples where people have discussed

bringing in the automatic license plate

readers and enough people showed up at a

meeting to say, "No, we do not want

these. We do not want these." And

remember,

those people on the council are people

that you can vote for or not vote for.

And so, they should be willing to listen

to you if you are in fact constituent.

So, that's where this actually needs to

be fixed at the ballot box. So, the

drive.com ran that story. Adam Ismail

wrote it. Great story. License plate

cameras will soon track phones,

wearables, infotainment, and even your

pets if they've been shipped. Questions

or comments, put them below. Let's talk

to you later. Bye-bye.

>> Thank you for watching Leato's Law. If

you think nobody cares about you, try

missing a couple of payments.