Fifty-six creators press Home Depot and Lowe's to pull Flock's plate readers from their lots

A Flock spokesperson said "Law enforcement cannot access a private customer's data without that customer's explicit authorization." Home Depot said it does not share license-plate data with immigration enforcement and does not grant federal law enforcement access to its readers. Both statements can hold and still leave the campaign's central claim standing, because the route described in the 404 Media report ran through local and state agencies searching on ICE's behalf, and the report did not establish that ICE had direct access to Flock's system or a formal contract with the company.

So the checkable questions for a company with cameras on its property are about which layer of government is asking. Which agencies hold a standing authorization to query the site's data, and how long the records live. Flock says the private customer owns and controls the data, including decisions about access, sharing and retention.

The operating case for the readers is also in the record. Flock says the technology helps businesses and communities prevent and investigate crime, including organized retail crime, and officers have told Business Insider that it helped their agencies solve cases. Business Insider has separately reported that Flock cameras can misread plates and lead police to the wrong people.

The 46 million followers behind the letter work out to roughly 821,000 per account across 56 signatories. The two people Business Insider names are well below that. Alexa Speed's Cut Off the Spigot, started in April 2025, has more than 417,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok, alongside a Substack newsletter where she points consumers at companies she considers problematic. Jess Rambo, a Marine veteran who runs a homesteading and building account, has about 28,000 and shops at her Home Depot in rural Georgia at least twice a week. "The concern for me is definitely the data collection and the safety of people if that data were put into the wrong hands," Rambo said. So the rest of the list carries most of the total, and that total counts accounts followed; it does not count distinct shoppers.

An advocacy group wrote to two retailers, and one of them replied with its data policy the same day. The queue behind it is longer than two companies. Flock puts its private-sector base above 5,000 accounts, so the two chains are about 0.04 percent of the roster, and the letter is a template with thousands of possible addressees. Business Insider reports no lawsuit and no regulatory action against either retailer. The campaign's instrument is customer attention. Speed said "The only meaningful response is to end and cancel their partnership."

Speed told Business Insider she published a Substack article and a video earlier this year about alternatives to the two chains after reading how local law enforcement can tap into their Flock systems. "I need to get a faucet or a wrench. I don't need to be surveilled," she said.