The Leonardo Patent That Turns Your Devices Into a Location Fingerprint and Forecasts Where You’ll Go Next – The patent is US 12,236,780 B2, “Systems and Methods for Electronic Signature Tracking and Analysis.” It was granted on February 25, 2025, to Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions — the American arm of Leonardo, the Italian defense conglomerate.
It is the second patent in a family behind a product called ELSAG SignalTrace. And the specification describes, in the company’s own filing, two striking capabilities. The first: once the system has watched you a few times, it no longer needs the camera. In the patent’s words, it “will be able to detect the likely presence of a vehicle and its associated license plate without visual information, e.g., without the use of a camera.”
The license-plate reader is the training wheel. Once the model learns you, the reader can come off. The second is the one that moves this out of surveillance and into something closer to prophecy. The system, the patent says, “allows an investigator to forecast the presence of a violation type, vehicle, or group of vehicles across time and location.” Not where you were. Where you will be. Nobody reported this patent. The story that ran last month — and it was a good one — was about the first patent, and the product it powers. This is the part that came after…
Here is what that brochure says, in Leonardo’s own words. SignalTrace builds what it calls a “unique, trackable ‘electronic fingerprint’” from the devices you carry. Its list of “Tracked Device Types” is not vague. It names key cards. Wearables — “watches, fitness trackers.” Wireless headphones. Your car’s tire-pressure sensors and infotainment system. And, in a detail that reads like satire until you sit with it, your pet’s microchip…”
See also Proton – Forget Flock. Now The Cameras Can Read Your Pockets Too. A defence contractor called Leonardo has decided that reading your plate is no longer enough. Their new system, ELSAG SignalTrace, reads everything else you’re carrying. You drive past a sensor, and it doesn’t just photograph the car.
Instead, it grabs the wireless signals leaking out of every device inside it: your phone, your smartwatch, your earbuds, your fitness tracker, the car’s own Bluetooth, tyre pressure sensors, the key fob, and in some cases, even your pet’s microchip.
Then it ties all of that to your numberplate and stores these data for later. It is, as far as branding goes, refreshingly honest. The product page’s own subheading is “Identify Suspects by the Electronic Devices They Use.”…he system works because almost every device you own is shouting a more-or-less stable identifier into the air whether you asked it to or not.
As we have covered partially in a video before, these come in the form of Bluetooth, Wi-Fi requests, RFID, and the radios baked into your car. SignalTrace doesn’t have to break into any of it; it’s not hacking anything, just listening and storing…”
The Brand Ledger
