How Cities Are Forced to Funnel License Plate Data Into a Federal Surveillance Program

The federal government is using a 1980s anti-drug-trafficking grant program to force US cities to funnel data from automated license plate readers (ALPR) into large federal surveillance centers under the White House's jurisdiction, according to records reviewed by 404 Media.

Under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program, reads from local police departments' Flock, Axon and other ALPR cameras are aggregated on federal servers, where other federal, state and local agencies, including some with no ALPR contracts of their own, can search them. In some cases the data then flows into a bigger Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) system, the National License Plate Reader Program (NLPRP).

What HIDTA is

HIDTA funds 33 intelligence centers across the US and sits under the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), which also funded Hemisphere, a call-records database that collected data on more than a trillion AT&T calls. Each center is run by an executive board of law enforcement officials and government lawyers, leaving unclear who is responsible for the data.

How it works in Georgia

Georgia cities cannot run ALPR systems on state rights of way without signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that commits them to sending data to a HIDTA. Earlier this month Brunswick, Georgia, could not deploy Axon plate cameras without an agreement with the Atlanta-area HIDTA. A Flock page for Georgia agencies says the same, and a login portal for the national HIDTA system runs through the Houston HIDTA.

One program into another

A December 2024 DEA privacy impact assessment of the NLPRP says the agency runs its own readers but also reaches non-DEA equipment through HIDTA and other agencies. It warns the system could one day hold enough cameras to permit ongoing tracking of a person's travels. Houston's HIDTA paid Recruitful LLC $306,800 to build an LPR database merging data from Flock, Axon, ELSAG and Vigilant.

Oversight and reaction

The Randolph County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina has said its data is kept on the federal Houston-HIDTA database and cannot be shared publicly. The DEA has argued in court that HIDTA records are not subject to public records law.

Cris van Pelt, creator of HaveIBeenFlocked.com, whose records requests supplied many of the documents behind the story, said the DEA and ONDCP already aggregate local data behind the scenes and bypass democratic processes. Jeramie Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told 404 Media the scheme adds another layer of obfuscation over how plate reader data is used. An activist with Southerners Against Surveillance Systems and Infrastructure said the cameras should be removed. Flock and Axon did not comment; the DEA said it has no jurisdiction over HIDTA; CBP and the ONDCP did not respond. In July, the administration gave HIDTA $277 million more.