The technology: what it collects, what it infers
A camera produces a plate, a timestamp, and a location. The software turns those reads into associations, patterns of life, and predictions. Below: what the systems already do, then every provider — click through for their hardware, model by model, and their platform.
What the software already does — documented
| Use case | The shipping feature |
|---|---|
| Map who travels with whom | Flock Convoy Analysis; Vigilant Associate Analysis [source] |
| List everyone at a sensitive location | Vigilant Stakeout [ACLU/NYPD records] |
| Predict where a vehicle will be | Vigilant Locate Analysis [vendor user guide] |
| Track a driver across states | Flock Multi-Geo — the Texas abortion search touched 83,000 cameras [404 Media] |
| Turn a plate into a person | Flock Nova [404 Media] |
| Fingerprint the devices in your car | Leonardo SignalTrace; Jenoptik TraffiCatch (deployed since ~2019) [EFF] |
| Screen for immigration status via local alerts | NCIC hotlist ingestion (ICE's Immigration Violator File — Flock, Axon, Vigilant, ELSAG) [EFF] |
| Stalk an ex | At least ~50 documented US cases of officers using ALPR networks to track romantic interests — the audit log is the only thing that caught anyone [404 Media] [IPVM] |
The providers in Canada
Each page covers one company: who they are, their platform, and their hardware — radios, sensors, and certifications, model by model.
Genetec
🇨🇦 Canada — Montréal No Wi-Fi/BT on any modelThe structural contrast: agency-controlled deployments, customer-owned data, no vendor-run national search pool — and cert-verified radio-silent hardware.
Company + hardware + platform →Axon
🇺🇸 US — active in Canada (Toronto, York Region) LTE + Wi-Fi + BTBodycam giant turned ALPR network: in-car Fleet 3, fixed Outpost (now certified for Canada), and the Fusus real-time crime centre that fuses private cameras into police view.
Company + hardware + platform →Neology (PIPS)
🇺🇸 US — supplies BC's provincial program 4G/5G + GPS (per vendor)The vendor behind Canada's strictest deployment: BC deletes non-hit reads at the end of the officer's shift. PIPS heritage: 50,000+ systems in 100+ countries.
Company + hardware + platform →Dahua
🇨🇳 China — 21 mapped Canadian police-layer cameras Wired PoE — no radiosThe PRC vendor banned from US federal procurement (NDAA §889) and cut off from new FCC equipment authorizations in 2022 — still sold freely in Canada.
Company + hardware + platform →Axis Communications
🇸🇪 Sweden — cameras mapped in Canada Wired PoE — no radiosThe traditional-CCTV path to ALPR: wired PoE cameras with plate-reading software — certified as unintentional radiators, meaning no radios by design.
Company + hardware + platform →Verkada
🇺🇸 US — cameras mapped in Canada PoE (gen-1: dormant Wi-Fi)Cloud-first cameras where footage leaves the premises by design — including the industry's clearest documented case of a dormant radio a vendor can switch on remotely.
Company + hardware + platform →Perceptics
🇺🇸 US — at Canadian (CBSA) border crossings Border-lane infrastructureThe border-lane specialist — and the vendor behind one of surveillance's defining breaches: traveler photos copied off government systems and hacked onto the dark web.
Company + hardware + platform →US & international — the context Canada is heading into
Flock Safety
🇺🇸 US — no Canadian police contracts; Flock-tagged pins in Canada are likely private/HOA LTE + Wi-Fi + BTThe network-as-product vendor: ~5,000 agencies searching each other's cameras, plus drones, audio sensors, and a people-lookup layer. 50+ US cities have cancelled since 2025.
Company + hardware + platform →Motorola Solutions (Vigilant + DRN)
🇺🇸 US L6Q: LTE + Wi-Fi + BT + radarThe inference pioneer: LEARN's Stakeout, Associate and Locate analytics over 1.5B police reads pooled with 5B+ commercial scans from repossession fleets.
Company + hardware + platform →Leonardo ELSAG
🇮🇹 Italy — US ALPR arm (ELSAG) SignalTrace: harvests Wi-Fi/BT/RFIDThe vendor that dropped the plate: SignalTrace builds "electronic fingerprints" from the wireless devices in your car — and as a passive receiver, it's invisible to radio certification.
Company + hardware + platform →Jenoptik
🇩🇪 Germany — UK national ANPR + US border TraffiCatch: captures BT addressesThe first vendor to ship plate + device tracking in the field: TraffiCatch has run in Texas border counties since ~2019 on DHS grant money.
Company + hardware + platform →SoundThinking
🇺🇸 US Rekor-powered ALPRThe fusion vendor: gunshot detection, ALPR, and a person-records search engine chained in a single platform since April 2025.
Company + hardware + platform →⚠ The antenna problem: it stopped being "just plates"
Two ALPR vendors now sell plate readers that also capture the wireless signals inside your car. Jenoptik's TraffiCatch — deployed in Texas border counties since ~2019 on DHS grant money — detects Bluetooth addresses from phones, earbuds, and car systems and merges them with the plate read. Leonardo's SignalTrace (announced 2026) markets "electronic fingerprints": identifying "groups of consumer electronic devices that routinely travel together," with or without a readable plate. Your phone randomizes its identifiers; your earbuds, smartwatch, car head unit, and tire-pressure sensors mostly don't — and the combination of devices you carry is a signature even when each one behaves.
The sharper fact: on most modern networked ALPR hardware, the radio is already installed. Flock's Falcon contains an active Wi-Fi + Bluetooth module (18,000+ of its own hotspots are visible on public wardriving databases); Motorola's L6Q and Axon's Outpost ship certified radio stacks. None of them sniff today — but for those platforms, device tracking is a software update plus a legal decision, not a hardware purchase. Genetec's cameras are the cert-verified exception: no Wi-Fi or Bluetooth on any model.
And no retention statute in the rules comparison mentions device signals. Every rule ever written about this technology regulates the plate.
Analysis: where the documented capabilities point
This section is analysis, not reporting — written from professional experience building AI systems. Every item extends a capability the vendor documents; none asserts a system is doing this today.
- The borrowed car doesn't help you. SignalTrace fingerprints the devices, not the vehicle, and works "with or without" a plate read — the vendor's framing, taken one honest step: switch cars, keep your phone and watch, and you're the same fingerprint on a different chassis.
- Four devices that always move together are an inference engine's favourite fact. "Devices that routinely travel together" (Leonardo's words) is a household, a crew, a carpool, a congregation — association mapping that never needed a licence plate. The plate-side version already ships as Convoy Analysis.
- Escalation is the roadmap, not a slippery slope. Flock already launches drones off camera hits; SoundThinking already chains gunshot → plate → person-records in one workflow. Sensor event to person file is the documented product direction of the two most aggressive vendors.
- The least-regulated layer is growing fastest. Passive receivers carry no certification trail, and no retention rule in our rules comparison mentions device signals. The inference layer's newest input sits in the emptiest part of the rulebook.