License plate readers now at Home Depot, Lowe's Home Improvement stores
The short version: NBC Connecticut reports Home Depot and Lowe's are installing license plate readers in parking lots, quietly expanding private surveillance under the banner of 'loss prevention.'
Our Take
Credit to NBC Connecticut for catching this one: license plate readers are now creeping into the parking lots of Home Depot and Lowe's, framed as just another anti-theft tool. But once a camera captures your plate, your visit timestamp, and potentially your location history, that data doesn't just vanish after the return-fraud investigation closes. It becomes another node in a growing web of private-sector surveillance that often shares data with police departments and companies like Flock Safety with little public disclosure or consent.
This is how the surveillance dragnet expands — not through a single dramatic law, but through hundreds of quiet rollouts at big-box stores, gas stations, and HOAs, each justified as 'public safety.' Nobody voted on this. There's rarely a sign telling you your plate is being logged, and even more rarely a clear policy on how long that data sits in a database or who gets to query it later. A trip to buy lumber shouldn't leave a permanent digital breadcrumb.
If you want to see how far this has already spread in your area, check our camera map, and if you're ready to push back on unchecked plate surveillance at the local level, visit our take-action page for concrete next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of NBC Connecticut, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.