A gaggle of on-line creators with a mixed 46 million followers is demanding Lowe’s and Home Depot — two of the most important home-improvement shops within the US — to chop ties with Flock Security amid a nationwide campaign against large retailers that will have contracts with the surveillance tech firm.
In a letter despatched Friday morning to the businesses’ executives, 56 content material creators referred to as on Lowe’s and Dwelling Depot to “terminate all its contracts with Flock Security” and take away the corporate’s automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, from their parking heaps.
The letter raised issues that knowledge gathered by the cameras could possibly be accessed by federal or native legislation enforcement companies to focus on immigrant day laborers and different customers.
“By taking part in Flock’s community, you might be endangering the protection of consumers, particularly the immigrants and other people of coloration who store at your shops,” an e-mail that was despatched to the executives and considered by Enterprise Insider mentioned.
Flock cameras acquire license plate and car knowledge. An organization spokesperson mentioned Flock has greater than 5,000 non-public sector purchasers, together with retailers, healthcare establishments, small companies, and locations of worship.
Paul Weaver/SOPA Pictures/LightRocket by way of Getty Pictures
Regulation enforcement officers have beforehand advised Enterprise Insider that Flock’s technology has helped their companies remedy crimes. Flock says it helps companies and communities stop and examine crime, together with organized retail crime. Enterprise Insider additionally has reported that Flock cameras can misread license plates, main legislation enforcement to the fallacious individuals.
The corporate has grow to be a flash level amid broader issues over mass surveillance expertise and privateness.
Struggle For The Future, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy group that organized the content material creator-led marketing campaign, has pointed to a Could 2025 report from 404 Media that discovered native and state police companies had been working searches in Flock’s nationwide ALPR community for ICE and immigration-related probes.
The report didn’t set up that ICE itself had direct entry to Flock’s system, however confirmed how native companies might use the community on ICE’s behalf regardless that the federal company doesn’t have a proper contract with Flock.
As cities, from Austin to Evanston, Illinois, transfer to end their contracts with Flock, organizations like Struggle For The Future are placing comparable stress on retailers.
A Flock spokesperson mentioned non-public prospects personal and management the information collected by their programs, together with selections about entry, sharing, and retention. “Regulation enforcement can’t entry a non-public buyer’s knowledge with out that buyer’s specific authorization,” the spokesperson mentioned.
A Dwelling Depot spokesperson mentioned the cameras assist stop and examine theft, fraud, and arranged retail crime, in addition to shield prospects and staff. The retailer mentioned it doesn’t share ALPR knowledge with immigration enforcement or grant federal legislation enforcement entry to its license-plate readers.
Jess Rambo, a Marine veteran who now runs a homesteading and constructing Instagram account, The Painted Buffalo, with about 28,000 followers, mentioned she retailers at her native Dwelling Depot in rural Georgia a minimum of twice every week. She mentioned studying about Dwelling Depot’s use of ALPRs — and the potential for law-enforcement entry to the information — prompted her to signal the letter.
“The priority for me is unquestionably the information assortment and the protection of individuals if that knowledge had been put into the fallacious arms,” Rambo mentioned.
Alexa Velocity, one other signatory of the letter, runs Reduce Off the Spigot on Instagram and TikTok, in addition to a Substack publication the place she directs shoppers to firms she considers problematic. Velocity began the Instagram account in April 2025 and has since gained greater than 417,000 followers.
Velocity advised Enterprise Insider that she revealed an article on her Substack and a video earlier this yr about options to Dwelling Depot and Lowe’s after seeing another 404 Media report detailing how native legislation enforcement can faucet into the retailers’ Flock surveillance programs. Becoming a member of Struggle For The Future’s marketing campaign was a technique to lengthen her advocacy to a “collective motion.”
“The one significant response is to finish and cancel their partnership,” Velocity mentioned. “I have to get a faucet or a wrench. I do not must be surveilled.”
A Lowe’s spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.
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