Lowe's and Home Depot are sharing customer data with law enforcement

https://flowingdata.com/2025/08/08/lowes-and-home-depot-are-sharing-customer-data-with-law-enforcement/

by tways_surv • 12 months ago

61 23 12 months ago

flowingdata.com

evanjrowley• 12 months ago

This probably has to do with these retail outlets being one of the most highly targeted by organized crime.

https://abc7news.com/post/los-angeles-stolen-items-home-depo...

https://6abc.com/post/brothers-arrested-organized-retail-the...

https://katv.com/news/local/conway-couple-charged-in-2-milli...

kjkjadksj2• 12 months ago

If only ICE were targeting criminals and not the economic backbone of our society.

staringback2• 12 months ago

Improper entry by alien is a criminal offense [1]

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1325

altcognito• 12 months ago

Though these aren't really cases where having some cameras in the parking lot and sharing with the FBI are going to identify the crime that's happening.

burnt-resistor2• 12 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flock_Safety#Person_lookup_too...

ICE and Palantir are definitely motivated to also get involved.

Social credit scores and pre-crime in America isn't far off.

idiotsecant• 12 months ago

This seems like fundamentally the information that is being shared is 'this vehicle entered the parking lot'. That information is also accessible by looking at the parking lot with your human eyes.

Definitely not a great trend for police to be collecting more surveillance data but it's also not 'social credit score' hysteria worthy.

pstuart• 12 months ago

If you've seen what ICE has done so far, and the "promises" made by the current regime, it's all valid to worry about unless you fall into the protected class of being a White Multi-Generational-Resident Evangelical Male.

That's not hyperbole, that's their goal and they're saying the quiet parts out loud now.

southernplaces7• 12 months ago

That information is also accessible by looking at the parking lot with your human eyes.

There's a blindingly obvious and enormous difference between some random joe the doughnut-grubbing cop watching a Home Depot parking lot to see if certain cars enter it, and digital license plate surveillance data on all cars entering said lot being constantly mass-sent to some federal or corporate-federal database for correlation with reams of other data shared by these same companies and other sources.

Guess where the latter can indeed easily lead? To exactly what you dismiss.

king_geedorah• 12 months ago

Why would there be a need or desire to bring such an arrangement to fruition if it was not meaningfully different from somebody watching individual cars/parking lots with their human eyes?

01HNNWZ0MV43FF• 12 months ago

If there was a cop at every single parking lot, every single checkout lane, every single on ramp and offramp, watching everyone's front door at all times, it would obviously be a police state

Lowe's and Home Depot are sharing customer data with law enforcement

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