Jesse Scheckner
Florida’s top lawman is turning up the heat on a camera maker with Chinese ties that watchdogs warn could put footage from U.S. baby monitors, nanny cams and doorbells in Beijing’s sights.
Attorney General James Uthmeier says he has issued a subpoena to Lorex, which was previously owned by China’s Dahua Technology, as part of a consumer protection investigation.
Uthmeier said he’s concerned about foreign spying risks and whether Floridians were misled about the privacy and security of Lorex cameras and apps, which are available at, among other places, Home Depot, Target and Amazon.
“Florida families deserve straight answers about who touches their data and who controls the code in the devices they put in their homes,” Uthmeier said in a statement announcing the subpoena.
“The Chinese Communist Party cannot be allowed to spy on American children. Florida will not tolerate it, and we will hold bad actors accountable.”
In a video posted to X, Uthmeier sharpened the warning, saying Lorex devices could potentially route footage back to underlings of Xi Jinping.
“Imagine that footage of your baby in a crib going to the Chinese government. This is unacceptable,” he said. “We will use every tool at our disposal to fight back against companies that share personal private data with a foreign government that puts national security at risk.”
The subpoena seeks information on Lorex’s ownership structure, corporate affiliates, component sourcing, software update origins, source-code access and data storage arrangements. It also demands records on security vulnerabilities, breaches and any steps the company has taken to remediate them, as well as marketing claims, sales data and contracts with U.S. and Florida retailers.
The subpoena itself does not allege wrongdoing, but it does signal heightened scrutiny.
Lorex — which has North American headquarters in Linthicum, Maryland, and Markham, Ontario, Canada — sells consumer and business surveillance equipment across the globe. The company was founded in 1991 as a privately held business in Canada, acquired by Virginia-based FLIR Systems in 2012 and sold to Dahua in 2012.
Dahua sold Lorex to Skywatch, a privately held cloud services company based in Taiwan, for approximately $72 million in late 2022. But despite the sale, Dahua reportedly continued to supply key components, raising ongoing concerns in Washington.
In 2019, while the company was still under Chinese ownership, Congress barred federal agencies from purchasing Lorex products under Section 889 of the National Defense Authorization Act.
The Federal Communications Commission followed in 2022 with a ban on Dahua-owned surveillance equipment after vulnerabilities were discovered that allowed unauthorized remote tampering and viewing of video and audio feeds. Purchasing records later showed U.S. agencies, including the Department of Defense, bought Lorex equipment through contractors, prompting bipartisan concern.
Then in late 2023, U.S. lawmakers linked Dahua to human rights abuses against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, where Chinese authorities deployed “ethnicity tracking” and mass surveillance. Lawmakers pressured Costco to stop selling Lorex products, noting the brand’s place on the Department of Commerce’s “Entity List” and Dahua’s ties to ethnic repression in China.
Costco had previously pledged to avoid products linked to human rights abuses, but kept Lorex on its shelves. Two Lorex products were available on Costco’s website Friday, when Uthmeier announced his query.
Uthmeier said the matter is about more than consumer deception.
“It’s a national security issue, and it will not be tolerated in this state,” he said. “So, we’ve begun this investigation.”
