You’ve heard of Flock. But have you heard of Leonardo’s Signal Trace? #privacy #cybersecurity

Our Take

Credit to Elisha Israel for widening the lens here. Most of the public conversation about automated license plate readers starts and ends with Flock Safety, partly because Flock has been aggressive about marketing itself to small-town police departments and HOAs. But Flock didn't invent this surveillance category, and it won't be the last company to cash in on it. Leonardo's Signal Trace is apparently another entrant doing similar plate-and-pattern tracking, which is exactly the kind of thing that should worry people who think "I don't live in a Flock city, so I'm fine."

The real issue isn't brand loyalty to one vendor, it's the underlying business model: quietly bolt a camera to a pole, harvest every plate that passes, stash the data in a cloud database, and sell access to whoever can pay — police departments, repo companies, sometimes private subscribers. Whether the logo says Flock, Leonardo, or something that launches next year, the privacy math is the same. Once your location history is captured at scale, it exists somewhere outside your control, with retention rules and sharing agreements most drivers never see and never consented to.

This is why we keep pushing people to actually look at what's mounted near their own neighborhood instead of just reacting to headlines about one company. Check our camera map to see what's been spotted in your area, and if you want to push back on these systems locally, our take-action page has concrete steps for showing up at council meetings and asking the uncomfortable questions.