Public records and court documents reviewed by 404 Media reveal a complex system in which the federal government uses the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) program to obtain data from local police departments using Flock, Axon, and other automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras. This data is aggregated on federal government servers and made accessible to other federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies. In some cases, data is further shared with the Drug Enforcement Administration's National License Plate Reader Program.
The HIDTA program falls under the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, which recently awarded it for managing an ALPR platform that brings together all levels of law enforcement. Privacy researcher Cris van Pelt, who obtained the documents through public records requests, said: "When local police and private vendors promise community control over surveillance, they obscure a broader agenda. The DEA and ONDCP are already aggregating local data behind the scenes. This bypasses democratic processes entirely. The public has made it clear that mass surveillance violates fundamental rights, even when it is laundered through fragmented systems, private companies, and regional task forces."
The ONDCP has previously funded other large surveillance programs, including Hemisphere, a call records database that collected phone records and location data on more than a trillion AT&T calls. As cities begin to place restrictions on how locally collected ALPR data can be used, the HIDTA mechanism represents an avenue for federal agencies to access data they might not otherwise obtain, without obvious oversight.