A 404 Media investigation found that a federal drug-policy program pipes city license plate cameras into federal databases, and Senator Wyden now wants a shelved 2024 privacy review made public.
There is a federal anti-drug program called HIDTA, run out of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. It signs agreements with cities across the country to pull license plate data from companies like Flock and Axon into federal databases.
In other words, every car photographed by a local camera can be looked up by the federal government.
The report exists. You just cannot read it.
In 2024, a nonprofit contractor called MITRE ran a privacy review of the program, covering both its license plate system and an earlier project that secretly collected phone data. That review has never been released.
Senator Ron Wyden has written to the office's director demanding that review, plus a separate analysis of license plate reader systems. His words: there is currently limited transparency.
Your plate, in a federal file
404 Media broke the story last month. Why an anti-drug program needs nationwide vehicle tracking, officials have not explained.
Why it matters
License plate cameras have always been sold as local policing, and residents assume they photograph their own street corner. Once the data flows to the federal level, the picture changes: a drug program can reconstruct years of anyone's movements, and a privacy review sitting unpublished for two years suggests even the internal verdict was not meant to be seen.
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