FBI Solicits $36M for Warrantless Near-Real-Time Access to Nationwide License-Plate-Reader Network

In June 2026, the FBI solicited up to $36 million for near-real-time access to a national automated-license-plate-reader (ALPR) network, enabling agents to query billions of vehicle-location scans across all states without warrants. Separately, defense contractor Leonardo is marketing “SignalTrace,” which bundles plate cameras with sensors that harvest identifiers from phones, wearables, and in-vehicle infotainment — packaging multi-modal location surveillance as a standard law-enforcement product. (Both sources are tier-2 technology outlets; a primary procurement/SAM.gov citation would harden the $36M figure.)

This extends the warrantless-location-surveillance stack the timeline tracks: FBI Director Patel’s confirmation of commercial-data purchases (2026-03-18–patel-fbi-confirms-warrantless-purchase-commercial-data), SFPD’s illegal ALPR sharing with ICE (2025-09-08–sfpd-illegal-alpr-data-sharing-ice), and the Flock Safety network (2017-08-01–flock-safety-surveillance-company-founded). It runs directly against the Fourth Amendment limit the Court just set on location data in Chatrie (2026-06-29–scotus-chatrie-location-data-fourth-amendment-geofence-warrant) — a $36M federal buy of exactly the kind of warrantless movement-tracking the ruling constrains, and a test of whether procurement outpaces the new doctrine.