Your Phone is the New License Plate. Police Tracking Your Personal Devices at Flock Traffic Cameras

Roland Mumford with mumford.law. Please click, like, share, and subscribe, and help us grow the channel. Lee Schmidt is a retired Navy veteran. He drives to work. He picks up his kids. He goes to the doctor. And every single trip is being logged. The time, the location, the make, model, and color of his car, stored in a private database, searchable by any cop in the country, no warrant required. My name is Lee Schmidt, and I live in Norfolk, Virginia. [music] I was stationed originally in Norfolk on board USS Bainbridge, and I retired here just recently. So, I was stationed on Little Creek. [music] I was driving to work, and I started driving by these little cameras on poles. And while sitting at a stoplight, waiting to get it [music] to work one day, I took a picture of one. And I reached out to [music] my local council people with the photo of one, just kind of asked, "What were they?" Well, I got a response back saying that they were the Flock cameras, and I started to do a bit of research on them, and I really realized how intrusive they were. That's Flock cameras. You probably already know about those. We've done videos on them. What I'm about to show you doesn't just track your car. It tracks you, specifically, personally, by your phone, your AirPods, your Apple Watch, your pet's microchip. And right now, there is not a single federal law that stops it. Here's where we are today. More than 5,000 law enforcement departments use Flock safety cameras. Billions of license plates scanned every month, stored, searchable, shareable, warrantless surveillance on a national scale. The cameras read your plate, log your location, and record your car's make, model, color, bumper stickers, and scratches. Flock calls it a vehicle fingerprint, and they are not wrong. But here's the limit Flock has always had. It knows the car, it does not know who is inside. That is the line between surveilling a vehicle and tracking a human being. That line is gone. That's the purpose of this video. A company called Leonardo, an Italian defense giant worth over 17 billion, has built a sensor that clips directly onto Flock cameras and cameras like them all across the country. It's called an ELSA G, an Elsag Signal Trace, and it does not read your plate. It reads your devices. As you drive past, it grabs the Bluetooth signal from your iPhone, the Wi-Fi signal from your laptop in the backseat, the RFID from your key card, the identifier from your AirTag, the signal from your tire pressure sensors, your car's infotainment system, even your pet's microchip. It combines every one of those signals and links them to your license plate. Leonardo calls this your electronic fingerprint. The brand is known as Signal Trace, that's the device. Here's what their own product sheet says. While 70 cars in 100 may contain iPhones, only one will have an iPhone 13, an Audi radio, Bose headphones, a Garmin watch, a key finder, and the license plate ABC 1234. That combination is uniquely to you. And here is the part that should stop you cold. Even if you change cars, even if you remove your license plate, they can still find you because your devices travel with you. This is already patented, already marketed to police departments in all 50 states. No federal law prohibits it. No notice is required when it goes up. You will not know when you drive past one. Coming up, how it actually works, who is behind it, and what the law says, or more accurately, what the law has not said. If this is the first time you're hearing about Signal Trace, share this right now. The only reason this story isn't everywhere is because most people don't know it exists. Do a YouTube search. There's only a handful of videos out there about this. Flock safety tells the public their cameras don't track people. Their own training videos show officers using the system to track a specific person across an entire city. Now, meet Signal Trace, a system that doesn't just track where your car goes, it tracks your phone, it tracks your watch, it builds a file on you. No warrant, no law against it, no way to opt out. Let's talk about how it works. The Signal Trace is built by Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions. That's the American arm of Italian defense giant Leonardo SPA, a company worth over $17 billion, as I've said. Signal Trace clips onto existing plate reader cameras as a sensor add-on. Every time your car drives past one, it sweeps the airwaves, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, RFID, any signal your devices broadcast. It captures the unique identifier from every device in your car, links them to your plate, timestamps them, stores them in a searchable database. Drive past 10 of these cameras over a month to work, to your doctor, to a protest, to church, and Signal Trace builds a detailed map of your life. This is Orwellian, 1984, as the book goes. Where you go, when, who travels with you, what patterns you follow is also what it catches additionally. Think of it as a stingray device fused with a license plate reader, deployed at road level, at scale, in your city, right now. and they never have to ask you. They never need a court order. Your devices are broadcasting those signals whether you want them to or not. So, who's behind this? On March 26, 2024, Leonardo quietly received a US patent for systems and methods for electronic signature tracking. Almost nobody noticed. By 2025, it had a product name, Signal Trace. Active, marketed, available. Leonardo's headquartered in Rome, Italy. The product it is selling to American law enforcement would be illegal to deploy in Italy. That's some irony. Illegal anywhere in the European Union, as well. Their US arm has contracts with Special Operations Command and the General Services Administration of the federal government. That means access to agencies across all 50 states. But, here's the legal void. The legal argument for plate readers has always been a car on a public road has no expectation of privacy. Courts have accepted that. But, collecting wireless device identifiers from people inside passing cars is something totally different. There is no law on the books that authorizes this. None. In 2018, the Supreme Court decided Carpenter versus United States, the similar case on these issues. The court said that tracking someone's movements over time is a Fourth Amendment search. It requires a warrant. Signal Trace does something more invasive than anything the court addressed in Carpenter. It doesn't go through a phone company. It doesn't require a subpoena. It pulls the data directly from your body as you drive past a pole on a public street. No judge approves it. No warrant is issued. Your data goes to a private foreign-owned corporation, not to a police evidence locker, to a company in Rome. The law has not caught up to this technology. That gap will not close on its own. Courts need cases, legislators need pressure, the public needs to know this exists. Next, the documented abuse, the communities that are winning, and exactly what you can do. Let's talk about that. Christian Elser got a citation for theft. She was innocent. A police officer used a Flock camera to track her car, got the wrong person, and cited her anyway. She had to gather her own evidence to fight it. You know, we have cameras in that town. You can't get a breath of fresh air in or out of that place without us knowing, correct? On September 27th, the Columbine Valley police officer came to Christian Elser's door and issued her a summons to appear in court, accusing her of stealing a $25 package in the town of Bowmar. The officer said he had doorbell video of the theft and had tracked her car in the area using Flock cameras. It is locked in. There is zero doubt. I wouldn't have come here unless I was 100% sure. 100%. The only problem with this case, she wasn't there, and she had the evidence to prove it. Dash camera video from her car, a log of her location from Google Maps, and doorbell video of her walking into her tailor's house when the package was stolen. He just kept telling me that any evidence I had wasn't worth it. Because you have not been honest with me, so I'm not going to extend you any courtesy of showing you a video when I don't need But I can show you videos cannot. After a few weeks, Elser was able to get in touch with the police chief, who wrote her an email, quote, "After reviewing evidence you have provided, nicely done, by the way, That's Flock, the system we already have. The system already being abused. Now, add the culprit, Signal Trace. Now they don't just have your car, they have your phone, your watch, your AirPods, your entire electronic identity. And here's what that looks like in practice. And the abuse is on the record. We already know how this gets abused. We have receipts. Officers have used existing plate reader databases to stalk former partners and women. More than a dozen documented cases, and I just did a video about that. A Texas officer searched 83,000 cameras to locate a woman who had sought an abortion. False positive matches have led to innocent people stopped at gunpoint. In November 2025, the Electronic Frontier Foundation documented that more than 50 agencies tracked protest activity using license plate readers. License plate readers are these cameras that are often times mounted by the side of a road that documents every vehicle that passes by the camera, along with the date, time, and location. They frame these cameras as a crime-solving tool, but we've seen the ways in which this has expanded to things like protesters, abortion seekers, immigrants, and even minuscule things like searches for school residencies or background checks. We uh identified 26 agencies that had searched things like music or loud or noise violation. It's kind of the equivalent of launching an entire nationwide chase over someone's subwoofer or or muffler. Suspicion of loud music, that's what we're using this nationwide spying system to investigate. What people need to know is um that these are in every city at this point. Uh reach out to your local policy makers, talk to your community. It's more likely than not that someone else is worried about them just as much as you are. Now, think about what Signal Trace adds. It's not just your car at a protest, it's your phone. It's everyone else's phones near you. Every device in that crowd is timestamped, stored, searchable forever. Signal Trace doesn't create new human failings. It gives those failings a vastly more powerful instrument. But here's what gives me hope. People are fighting back, and they are winning. In February 2026, after community pressure in Mountain View, the chief of police announced they were immediately discontinuing their Flock contract. Good morning. The vote to end that contract was unanimous, despite the fact that people did have the opinion that the cameras were helping to ensure greater public safety. Uh privacy concerns were always part of the conversation, but it really came to a head at the end of January when Mountain View police found that Flock Safety enabled a search setting without authorization, allowing access to at least four different federal law enforcement agencies. The city has 30 license plate reading cameras. Uh the license plate data was accessed by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, the federal agency that manages federal buildings, an Air Force Base, and a National Recreation Area. Mountain View police say staff is now looking into other vendors, but that this whole breakup could be complicated. In May of 2026, El Cerrito's City Council voted three to two to not renew their Flock contract. That is $315,000 back into the community over 3 years. The ACLU filed an amicus brief in a Fourth Circuit case arguing that ALPR mass surveillance violates the Fourth Amendment. New Mexico passed the Driver Privacy and Safety Act, blocking plate readers data sharing for immigration enforcement, and protecting people exercising their constitutional rights. Meanwhile, a bill aimed at protecting drivers' privacy is moving onto the house. The Senate advanced the Driver Safety and Privacy Act. It prevents New Mexico law enforcement enforcement from sharing of license plate reader data with federal immigration officers. It also blocks that information from being used to track people seeking abortions here in New Mexico. These wins happened because people showed up, and that's what is important about these videos. Now, what can you do? Here's an action list. As I said, share the video. One, turn off Bluetooth and Wi-Fi when you are not using them. Those are exactly the signals Signal Trace is built to capture. Two, your AirTags, fitness tracker, and your pet's chip are part of your electronic fingerprint. Any device that broadcasts a signal counts. Three, find out if your city has a Flock or ELSAG contract. Submit a public records request. The ACLU has free templates. Show up to your next city council meeting. Four, call your state representative about ALPR legislation. Model bills exist. This fight is happening in state houses right now. And five, if you were surveilled at a protest, a clinic, place of worship with no basis for suspicion, talk to a civil rights lawyer like me. The Carpenter argument for Signal Trace has not been fully litigated. That litigation needs to happen. It might be your case. And I stand ready. The surveillance state does not announce itself. It clips a sensor onto a camera that was already there and starts listening. Leonardo built this quietly, patented it quietly, marketed it quietly. The public only found out because investigative journalists at 404 Media got a hold of a product sheet and published it. Now, you know. The question is, what we do with that? Drop a comment. Does Carpenter versus United States cover Signal Trace? Or is this a constitutional gray zone? I want to hear what you think. If this video helped you understand your constitutional rights, share it. Subscribe. That is the most important thing you can do right now. I'll see you in the next one. Have a great day.