Influencers are urging Home Depot and Lowe's to drop Flock

A group of online creators pinch a mixed 46 cardinal followers is demanding Lowe's and Home Depot — 2 of the largest home-improvement stores successful the US — to trim ties pinch Flock Safety amid a nationwide run against ample retailers that whitethorn person contracts pinch the surveillance tech company.

In a missive sent Friday greeting to the companies' executives, 56 contented creators called connected Lowe's and Home Depot to "terminate each its contracts pinch Flock Safety" and region the company's automated licence sheet readers, aliases ALPRs, from their parking lots.

The missive raised concerns that information gathered by the cameras could beryllium accessed by national aliases section rule enforcement agencies to target migrant time laborers and different shoppers.

"By participating successful Flock's network, you are endangering the information of customers, particularly the immigrants and group of colour who shop astatine your stores," an email that was sent to the executives and viewed by Business Insider said.

Flock cameras cod licence sheet and conveyance data. A institution spokesperson said Flock has much than 5,000 backstage assemblage clients, including retailers, healthcare institutions, mini businesses, and places of worship.

Law enforcement officers person antecedently told Business Insider that Flock's technology has helped their agencies lick crimes. Flock says it helps businesses and communities forestall and analyse crime, including organized unit crime. Business Insider besides has reported that Flock cameras tin misread licence plates, starring rule enforcement to the incorrect people.

The institution has go a flash constituent amid broader concerns complete mass surveillance exertion and privacy.

Fight For The Future, a nonprofit integer authorities defense group that organized the contented creator-led campaign, has pointed to a May 2025 study from 404 Media that recovered section and authorities constabulary agencies were moving searches successful Flock's nationwide ALPR web for ICE and immigration-related probes.

The study did not found that ICE itself had nonstop entree to Flock's system, but showed really section agencies could usage the web connected ICE's behalf moreover though the national agency does not person a general statement pinch Flock.

As cities, from Austin to Evanston, Illinois, move to end their contracts pinch Flock, organizations for illustration Fight For The Future are putting akin unit connected retailers.

A Flock spokesperson said backstage customers ain and power the information collected by their systems, including decisions astir access, sharing, and retention. "Law enforcement cannot entree a backstage customer's information without that customer's definitive authorization," the spokesperson said.

A Home Depot spokesperson said the cameras thief forestall and analyse theft, fraud, and organized unit crime, arsenic good arsenic protect customers and employees. The retailer said it does not stock ALPR information pinch migration enforcement aliases assistance national rule enforcement entree to its license-plate readers.

Jess Rambo, a Marine seasoned who now runs a homesteading and building Instagram account, The Painted Buffalo, pinch astir 28,000 followers, said she shops astatine her section Home Depot successful agrarian Georgia astatine slightest doubly a week. She said learning astir Home Depot's usage of ALPRs — and the imaginable for law-enforcement entree to the information — prompted her to motion the letter.

"The interest for maine is decidedly the information postulation and the information of group if that information were put into the incorrect hands," Rambo said.

Alexa Speed, different signatory of the letter, runs Cut Off the Spigot connected Instagram and TikTok, arsenic good arsenic a Substack newsletter wherever she directs consumers to companies she considers problematic. Speed started the Instagram relationship successful April 2025 and has since gained much than 417,000 followers.

Speed told Business Insider that she published an article connected her Substack and a video earlier this twelvemonth astir alternatives to Home Depot and Lowe's aft seeing another 404 Media report detailing really section rule enforcement tin pat into the retailers' Flock surveillance systems. Joining Fight For The Future's run was a measurement to widen her defense to a "collective action."

"The only meaningful consequence is to extremity and cancel their partnership," Speed said. "I request to get a faucet aliases a wrench. I don't request to beryllium surveilled."

A Lowe's spokesperson did not respond to a petition for comment.

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