If you’ve been watching our videos, you know I keep an eye on all the ways new technology and rules are quietly changing what it means to own and drive your own car. We’ve talked about speed limiters, kill switches, driver monitoring, and all the data your vehicle is already collecting. Today I want to bring you something that’s moving fast and most people have no idea about yet. And I won’t blame you if this gets you mad. Those license plate cameras you see on highways, overpasses, and street corners? They’re not just reading tags anymore. A new system being sold to police and installed everywhere by government agencies are right now tracking your phones, smartwatches, car infotainment screens, pet trackers riding inside your vehicle, even health devices that many people wear. First, let’s talk about the cameras. They’re called Automatic License Plate Readers or ALPRs for short. They are also known as Flock cameras – that may be the company’s name, but they definitely see us as a flock of sheep. Police departments, toll authorities, and even some private companies have been using these types of cameras for years. They snap a picture of your plate plus your face, log the time and location, and store it in big databases. It started as a tool that was claimed to be for finding stolen cars or Amber Alerts. That part makes sense could make sense if that was all. But the databases got huge, now they have billions of scans, and the data sticks around, even though we were told otherwise. Sometimes it gets shared. Sometimes it gets used in ways that go way beyond catching criminals. Many times this data is sold to multiple companies from technology, to health care, to insurance, or even just whoever happens to