Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to License Plate Readers
Original: Company Will Add Phone, AirPod, and Smartwatch Trackers to ALPRs
A company plans to integrate Bluetooth device tracking for phones, AirPods, and smartwatches into existing ALPR surveillance infrastructure.
Automatic License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are already widely deployed for vehicle tracking, but one company now plans to add Bluetooth and Wi-Fi probes capable of detecting nearby personal devices including smartphones, AirPods, and smartwatches. This would allow simultaneous correlation of a vehicle's license plate with the device identifiers of its occupants. Privacy advocates warn this creates a dual-layer public surveillance network with no consent mechanism, raising serious civil liberties concerns.
The Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) system has been widely deployed for many years in major cities and highways across the United States. Its core function is to use cameras and optical character recognition technology to instantly read and record the license plate number, time, and location of passing vehicles, then upload the data to a centralized database for law enforcement agencies to query. However, a company recently announced plans to take it a step further by integrating Bluetooth and Wi-Fi probe technologies into ALPR hardware, enabling the system to simultaneously detect recognition signals broadcast by nearby devices, including smartphones, Apple AirPods wireless earbuds, and smartwatches like Apple Watch.
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