How the US government collects local license plate camera data

Cities across the United States are being pressured into feeding their automated license plate reader (ALPR) data into federal surveillance centers under the White House's jurisdiction, according to public records and court documents reviewed by 404 Media and published on September 30, 2026.

How the system works

The program at the center of the story is HIDTA, the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, which falls under the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). Through HIDTA, plate reads from local Flock, Axon and other ALPR cameras are pooled on federal servers, where they can be searched by other federal, state and local agencies. In some cases the data then reaches the Drug Enforcement Administration's National License Plate Reader Program.

Agreements that bypass local rules

In Georgia, cities cannot operate ALPR systems on state rights of way without signing a memorandum of understanding (MOU) that commits them to passing data to a HIDTA. The city of Brunswick, Georgia, had to sign such an agreement before deploying Axon cameras. A Flock page for Georgia agencies says any agency operating cameras in the Georgia Department of Transportation right of way must sign an MOU with HIDTA, and that its login portal runs through the Houston HIDTA.

A $306,800 database and a records gap

Houston's HIDTA paid a company called Recruitful LLC $306,800 to create and maintain an LPR database that combines reads from several camera providers, including Flock, Axon, ELSAG and Vigilant. Some jurisdictions argue their data sits directly on HIDTAs, which are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. The Randolph County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina said that "all data is kept on the Federal Houston-HIDTA database" and could not be shared with the public.

The DEA's own privacy warning

A December 2024 DEA privacy impact assessment says the agency runs its own plate readers but also gets non-DEA equipment data through HIDTA and other agencies. Regional hubs collect local data under agreements that allow sharing with the National License Plate Reader Program, it says, listing more than 250 law enforcement agencies and hubs. The assessment warns the system could grow large enough to "effectively permit on-going tracking of individual's travels," and that it risks "over-collection of the personally identifiable information of every license plate passing each LPR camera location."

Why it matters

Jeramie Scott, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center's Surveillance Oversight Center, told 404 Media that the same office that once funded a centralized call records database holding more than a trillion AT&T records has done the same for plate reader data. Critics say it lets the federal government gather data local rules might otherwise restrict. In July 2026 the Trump administration gave HIDTA $277 million in additional funding.