Influencers With 46M Followers Urge Home Depot, Lowe’s to Drop Flock

A gaggle of on-line creators with a mixed 46 million followers is demanding Lowe’s and Home Depot — two of the biggest home-improvement shops within the US — to chop ties with Flock Security amid a nationwide campaign against large retailers which will have contracts with the surveillance tech firm.

In a letter despatched Friday morning to the businesses’ executives, 56 content material creators known as on Lowe’s and Residence 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 information gathered by the cameras might 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 shoppers, particularly the immigrants and folks of coloration who store at your shops,” an e mail that was despatched to the executives and seen by Enterprise Insider mentioned.

Flock cameras accumulate license plate and automobile information. An organization spokesperson mentioned Flock has greater than 5,000 personal sector purchasers, together with retailers, healthcare establishments, small companies, and locations of worship.

Legislation enforcement officers have beforehand advised Enterprise Insider that Flock’s technology has helped their companies resolve crimes. Flock says it helps companies and communities forestall 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 turn out to be a flash level amid broader issues over mass surveillance expertise and privateness.

Combat For The Future, a nonprofit digital rights advocacy group that organized the content material creator-led marketing campaign, has pointed to a Might 2025 report from 404 Media that discovered native and state police companies have been operating 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 despite the fact 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 Combat For The Future are placing comparable stress on retailers.

A Flock spokesperson mentioned personal clients personal and management the information collected by their programs, together with selections about entry, sharing, and retention. “Legislation enforcement can’t entry a personal buyer’s information with out that buyer’s specific authorization,” the spokesperson mentioned.

A Residence Depot spokesperson mentioned the cameras assist forestall and examine theft, fraud, and arranged retail crime, in addition to shield clients and workers. The retailer mentioned it doesn’t share ALPR information 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 outlets at her native Residence Depot in rural Georgia no less than twice every week. She mentioned studying about Residence 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 information have been put into the fallacious fingers,” Rambo mentioned.

Alexa Velocity, one other signatory of the letter, runs Minimize 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 12 months about options to Residence 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 Combat For The Future’s marketing campaign was a method to prolong 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 should be surveilled.”

A Lowe’s spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for remark.

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