Home Depot Lawsuit: Secret Parking Lot License Plate & Surveillance Tracking #shorts

Our Take

Credit to Mike Loves Hustles for putting a spotlight on something we harp on constantly: surveillance doesn't stop at the sidewalk anymore. If the allegations in this lawsuit hold up, Home Depot joins a growing list of retailers accused of running license plate capture in their own parking lots — quietly building a record of who shops where, when, and how often, without shoppers ever agreeing to it or even knowing it's happening.

This is the same playbook as ALPR networks like Flock Safety, just run by a private company instead of a police department. Whether it's a patrol car or a parking lot pole camera, the underlying problem is identical: plate reads get logged, stored, and potentially shared or sold, and the person who got scanned has zero say in any of it. A lawsuit might extract a settlement, but it won't undo the fact that mass plate tracking has become normalized across both public and private space.

We'll be watching how this case develops. In the meantime, check our camera map to see what's tracking you in your own neighborhood, and hit up our take-action page if you want to push back on the surveillance creep — whether it's coming from city hall or the parking lot.