# HIDTA LPR Network The **automatic-license-plate-reader data-sharing network** operated under the federal **High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area** program. HIDTA is a program of the **Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)** in the Executive Office of the President; it provides federal funding and coordinating infrastructure to multi-jurisdiction law-enforcement task forces operating in regions designated as having a heightened drug-trafficking burden. HIDTA's LPR Network is a federally-funded plate-data-sharing infrastructure that lets HIDTA-participating LE agencies exchange ALPR plate-read data across jurisdictional boundaries. ## How it appears in the corpus The corpus's first documentary anchor for the HIDTA LPR Network is **bundled into the Arkansas State Police's 2024-08 Term Contract with [[Leonardo US Cyber and Security Solutions, LLC]]**. PO 4502235324 line items end with (Tier-1 corpus, `1513_001.pdf`, p. 26): > *"First Year Warranty Included / One Time HIDTA LPR Network License Included"* The HIDTA LPR Network License is listed alongside the warranty as one of the bundled inclusions of the initial system buy. The vendor (Leonardo) delivers this license as part of the cooperative-contract pricing — meaning the federal-LE-data-sharing infrastructure is wired into the procurement at the moment of contract execution, not as a subsequent add-on configuration. ## Structural significance - **The license is included once.** "One Time" suggests a perpetual or one-time-fee license that grants ASP membership in or access to the HIDTA LPR Network for the term of the system's operation (rather than an annually renewing subscription). The exact operational scope (read-write access, read-only access, query API access, alerting integration, etc.) is not described in the PO line. - **It is the first state-LE-agency federal-data-sharing-procurement anchor.** Prior corpus instances of federal-LE access to Arkansas ALPR data — e.g., the 5,929 federal queries on Conway PD's Flock data in 51 days documented in [[Federal Searches CSV]] and [[Federal LE Quiet Access through Vendor Platforms]] — operated through Flock's platform-default-on inter-agency sharing topology. The HIDTA LPR Network is a different structural mechanism: a federally-administered network with formal member-agency licensing and procurement-time integration. - **It commits ASP into a federally-administered data-sharing infrastructure at procurement-time.** Whether ASP's deployment makes plate-read data available to other HIDTA members (Texas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, etc.) and whether other HIDTA members' plate-read data is available to ASP is the operational question; the license bundling at procurement time documents the structural fact that the integration exists. ## Stakeholders - **Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP)** — the federal Executive Office program that administers HIDTA generally. ONDCP describes the HIDTA Program as coordinating and assisting "federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies to disrupt and dismantle drug trafficking organizations in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia" (primary public record, [ONDCP HIDTA designation release, 2025-09-22](../../web%20archive/2026-06-06/whitehouse.gov/ondcp-two-newly-designated-hidta-2025-09-22.md)). - **National HIDTA Assistance Center (NHAC)** — the national-level management/training arm of the HIDTA program (based at Miami / Doral FL); publisher of cross-HIDTA management guidance. - **Gulf Coast HIDTA** — Arkansas's regional HIDTA. Six-state coverage: **Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Florida** (primary public record, [Gulf Coast HIDTA home page](../../web%20archive/2026-06-05/gchidta.org/gulf-coast-hidta-home.md)). Headquartered at **3748 N Causeway Blvd Ste 200, Metairie, LA 70002**, with an Investigative Support Center (ISC) at a separate Metairie address and a 24-hour Blue Lightning Operations Center (BLOC) at Gulfport, MS. **ASP's HIDTA leadership tie is structural:** Colonel Mike Hagar was elected Chairman of Gulf Coast HIDTA in 2025 (primary public record, [ASP ICP HONORED AT HIDTA — 2026-04-28 DPS press release](../../web%20archive/2026-06-05/dps.arkansas.gov/asp-icp-honored-at-hidta-for-record-seizures-officer-of-the-year-recognition.md)). - **ASP's Interstate Criminal Patrol (ICP)** — the operational ASP unit that runs Gulf Coast HIDTA's Arkansas-Interstate interdiction work. Lt. [[Dennis Overton]]'s "ASP HQ / ICP" posting on the Leonardo PO is the ICP unit. ASP's ICP team has been recognized as Gulf Coast HIDTA Agency / Team of the Year in 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 (Tier-2 quote). - **HIDTA-participating LE agencies** — the agencies that exchange plate-read data through the network. - **ALPR-platform vendors** — Leonardo / ELSAG (per the corpus); presumably other vendors (Vigilant Solutions, possibly Flock) interface with HIDTA as well, though this corpus does not yet document those connections. ## Open questions - **Architecture of the HIDTA LPR Network.** Is the network a centralized federal data-store, a federated query infrastructure, an alert-sharing-only system, or something else? The operational architecture is not in this batch. - **Whether the HIDTA LPR Network operates under the [[Arkansas Automatic License Plate Reader System Act]]'s § 12-12-1803(d)(1)(C) permission** for ALPR comparison against ACIC / NCIC / FBI / OMV / "a database created by law enforcement for the purposes of an ongoing investigation." The Act's permitted comparisons are narrowly enumerated; whether the HIDTA LPR Network qualifies as one of these (or as a § 12-12-1804(d) inter-LE-agency sharing of "evidence of an offense" data) is a legal question not addressed in this batch. - **Retention rules.** What plate-data retention period applies to HIDTA-shared reads? Is it the originating agency's retention (e.g., ASP's customer-controlled retention on the ELSAG system), the HIDTA-network retention, or the federal data-retention rules under the relevant ONDCP statute? - **Cross-platform connectivity.** Whether Flock-deployed agencies (Conway PD, LRPD, PCSO) also access the HIDTA LPR Network through Flock's platform, and whether ASP's ELSAG-deployed HIDTA license interoperates with Flock-deployed agencies' data, are testable questions in subsequent FOIA batches. ## Notes - HIDTA's broader public-records footprint includes its annual reports, congressional appropriation requests, and program-evaluation documentation — Tier-2 research targets for anchoring this concept page further. The legacy ONDCP HIDTA program landing page at `whitehouse.gov/ondcp/high-intensity-drug-trafficking-areas/` returned 404 in the 2026-06-05 sweep (relocated under the current administration); the **current canonical `whitehouse.gov` anchor** is the 2025-09-22 ONDCP designation release archived this cycle (primary public record, [ONDCP HIDTA designation release](../../web%20archive/2026-06-06/whitehouse.gov/ondcp-two-newly-designated-hidta-2025-09-22.md)), which confirms the program is ONDCP-funded and ONDCP-administered; the program's standing public directory and map is at `hidtaprogram.org`. - The HIDTA LPR Network is a structural-mechanism anchor for federal-LE involvement in Arkansas ALPR operations, distinct from the platform-default-on Flock pattern. Both mechanisms reach the same outcome — federal-LE access to local ALPR plate data — but through different documentary paths: HIDTA via procurement / membership / licensing; Flock via platform-configuration default-on / customer-toggle-controlled sharing. - The "HIDTA LPR Network" terminology appears most explicitly in vendor (Leonardo / ELSAG) materials describing the integration; it is less prominent in NHAC and HIDTA-program direct publications. Two readings remain in tension and warrant further research: (a) the HIDTA LPR Network is a formally-named federal-HIDTA-administered program (which would imply specific architectural, governance, and statutory anchors that should be discoverable on `nhac.org` or in ONDCP publications); or (b) "HIDTA LPR Network" is a Leonardo-vendor-marketing term for the regional-HIDTA-Investigative-Support-Center-mediated plate-data sharing that Leonardo's customers participate in through the Gulf Coast HIDTA (or analogous regional HIDTA) infrastructure. Both readings are consistent with the ASP procurement evidence; the corpus cannot currently distinguish them. - See [[Federal LE Quiet Access through Vendor Platforms]] for the corpus's synthesis on the broader pattern of federal-LE access to Arkansas ALPR data through vendor platforms.