We have been in a kind of Big-Brother-is-always-watching state for some time now, but as if an Orwellian reality is not concerning enough — now they’re finding much more ways to maintain tabs on you and everybody you recognize and love. A brand new device is coming soon, helping your favorite uniformed groups add much more information to your personal data set each time you allow the home.
Leonardo Company, known for its technology products, specifically automated license plate readers (ALPRs), has introduced a brand new device to gather more data from you whilst you’re driving around town. And like ALPRs, you may’t just “opt out.” The devices are often known as SignalTrace, or more specifically ELSAG SignalTrace, as first reported by 404 media, which looks to retrieve data from electronic devices like your phone, smartwatches, wireless devices, cars, even your air tags. The aim of this device is, utilized in tandem with ALPRs, to assist pair devices read from Bluetooth, RFID tags, and Wi-Fi, along with your automotive and license plate information — making the combined set a fair more traceable mixture of knowledge.
The device collects the “electronic signature” of any consumer electronic devices that pass by. That information is then paired with an associated ALPR device, which may then associate specific devices with a license plate and vehicle. Leonardo Company described the technology as revealing “signatures continuously traveling along with a person or vehicle, which may result in the invention of convoys and other movement and travel patterns” to assist “create an extra data set to reinforce records captured by LPR cameras in the realm.”
Data collection you may’t opt out of
With this tech, if I were to pass my local area ALPR with an associated SignalTrace device, authorities could know that I operate a 2016 Mercedes-Benz CLS 400 in Michigan, have an Apple smartwatch, and an iPhone 16. That kind of “electronic fingerprint” can then be used to trace my “suspect movements” or if “multiple suspects are traveling together.”
As an element of their SignalTrace promotional material, Leonardo Company dedicated a bit specifically to “Technology that Respects the Rights of Individuals.” It insists that it doesn’t decrypt or read the contents of the devices it obtains electronic signatures from. Fairly, “It allows an electronic signature to be alerted on once it has been identified within the technique of an investigation, and only in a case where a criminal offense occurred.”
But as we learned just a few weeks back in talking about ALPRs and the abuses befalling the info collected there, the individuals determining the “investigation” and the “crime” have a number of wiggle room. It only takes one person with an axe to grind or questionable motives to falsify a search and access information that may not technically legal to acquire. How can we know? It’s happened rather a lot, across the country. Hell, 404 Media published one other article today about how cops proceed to get arrested for using this data to stalk people for their very own personal agendas.
The road between public information has develop into increasingly blurred as recent tracking devices with little-to-no restrictions emerge, further commodifying humans as sets of knowledge points, useful provided that we may be tracked.
This Article First Appeared At www.jalopnik.com
