Licence plate cameras run by American cities and counties are feeding a federal anti-drug programme, according to public records and court documents reviewed by 404 Media. The records show local data being pooled on federal servers that officers from other agencies can search.
The HIDTA programme, which the Trump administration funded with an additional $277 million in July 2026, collects and shares the data. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy oversees HIDTA.
Cris van Pelt, who runs the HaveIBeenFlocked.com website, said the arrangement sidesteps local decision-making. 'This bypasses democratic processes entirely,' he said.
Georgia Cameras on State Land Must Be Linked
In Georgia, the requirement applies to cameras operating on Georgia Department of Transportation land. Agencies that install or run cameras on GDOT right-of-way 'must sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with HIDTA to remain in compliance with the new GSP policy.'
Once the agreement is signed, readings from those cameras become accessible to Georgia users of HIDTA's national plate reader system. The city of Brunswick learnt this earlier this month, when it could not deploy Axon cameras without first signing such an agreement with the Atlanta-area HIDTA.
Georgia is not the only hub. The Houston HIDTA paid Recruitful LLC $306,800 to build and maintain a database combining reads from several camera providers, including those made by Flock, Axon, ELSAG, and Vigilant.
New: Through a series of complex agreements with cities, the White House built a massive license plate camera database accessible to the feds. The program aggregates data across license plate companies (Flock, Axon, more) & is searchable by many agencies:https://t.co/hzrypYgCxX
— Jason Koebler (@jason_koebler) September 30, 2026
The DEA's Privacy Assessment
The data does not always stop at HIDTA. A Drug Enforcement Administration privacy impact assessment approved in December 2024 says regional hubs, including HIDTAs, gather plate data from local agencies under agreements that can allow the data to be shared with the DEA's National Licence Plate Reader Program.
The document lists agreements with 'over 250 law enforcement agencies and hubs.' It also flags a privacy risk that the system could grow large enough 'to effectively permit on-going tracking of individual's travels.' The assessment acknowledges collecting 'a large number of images of travel of law-abiding drivers not relevant to criminal investigations.'
The DEA says those risks are mitigated. The same assessment states that its camera coverage 'is not extensive enough to enable comprehensive nationwide tracking surveillance.' It also says records in the DEA's system that nobody views become inaccessible after 90 days.
A Records Trail That Goes Cold
Tracing where the data ends up has proved difficult. The Randolph County Sheriff's Office in North Carolina declined to release records, saying 'all data is kept on the Federal Houston-HIDTA database.'
The DEA has argued in court that it does not 'create, possess, maintain, or control HIDTA programme records.' HIDTAs are guided locally by executive boards made up of federal and non-federal law enforcement leaders.
Congress created the programme under the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. The Office of National Drug Control Policy administers it.
That office previously funded Hemisphere, a call-records database involving more than a trillion AT&T calls. Jeramie Scott of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the plate-reader arrangement follows a similar pattern. 'The whole scheme adds another layer of obfuscation of how license plate reader data is being used and who is using it,' he said.
Flock, Axon, Customs and Border Protection and the Office of National Drug Control Policy did not respond to requests for comment. The DEA said it had no jurisdiction over HIDTA and declined to comment.
Some US cities have begun placing limits on how their Flock data can be used. Watsonville, California, voted this month to cut data retention to seven days and end sharing with other jurisdictions. If the same readings are copied to a HIDTA server, those local rules may not determine who can search the data there or how long it is retained.
Others have ended or let their Flock contracts lapse, including Santa Cruz and Los Angeles in California, Austin and Pflugerville in Texas, and Oak Park in Illinois. Nearby Evanston, Illinois, deactivated all 19 of its Flock cameras in August 2025, after a state audit found US Customs and Border Protection had been given access to Illinois cameras.
