It happened recently near Kansas City. See the link below

Here is a link that might be useful: Indoor Gardening Prompts Raid

One of the comments to the article indicated people have gotten visits from law enforcement after ordering Mylar Reflective Hydroponic Grow Tents. That's just....scary.

Hydroponic stores will not should not regularly be reporting their sales info to law enforcement. The only way the police will get this information is if they request it. In order for that to happen, they will likely have a probable reason to be reviewing your financial records (in order to know who you're ordering stuff from). So basically, If you're not doing anything illegal, don't worry about it.

So after reading the article, it doesn't really mention they bought their supplies online. I'm not saying the search was justified, just an observation that probably they were at the wrong place at the wrong time incident. well, and the police were overzealous in their endeavors and likely searched the home illegally.

The cops write down license plate numbers of cars visiting the hydro store. That's how they get the address for the warrant. That's assuming they had a warrant in the KC case, no judge should have signed that warrant, though. Either the judge is crooked, was lied to by the cops, or the cops just forged his signature on the warrant.

Anyone catch the fact that the husband and wife were ex-CIA? There may be more to the story than getting raided for buying hydro equipment. We'll probably never know, but I would be interested to see if this is happening around the nation to other people.

Makes sense that law enforcement is staking out hydro stores. That would explain how they busted a nursery in my area that was prohibited from selling citrus. The nursery trucked in a citrus plant from a neighboring nursery anyways and agents were on scene in less than five minutes I don't see how they could be on scene at the nursery within five minutes unless they already had a agent staking out the nursery.

Would the purchase of several pieces of hydro equipment constitute probable cause for a home inspection?

No!
There is nothing illegal about growing plants hydroponically.

"Would the purchase of several pieces of hydro equipment constitute probable cause for a home inspection?"

I am not a practicing attorney, but I do have a law degree. To answer your question, no it should not. No judge should sign a warrant on those facts, which is why I suspect corruption. The 4th Amendment to the US Constitution is supposed to protect you from unreasonable searches by the government. That's the reason that search warrants signed by a judge are required.

WTH, gardenweb88? why was a nursery prohibited from selling citrus? And why were the police involved?

Around the border of Los Angeles and Orange County a case of HLB was found. Nurseries within a 5 mile radius were prohibited from selling citrus plants. All existing plants on inventory were barcoded and disposed of. The nursery was notified by Agriculture authorities not to sell citrus, but the nursery caved into a special request by a customer and trucked in a plant from a neighboring nursery outside of the quarantine zone. Within five mins of unloading the plant, agriculture authorities were on site to issue citations.

ahhh,that makes sense.

im on a military network (.mil) at my job. you can guess how many sites get filtered and blocked by googling hydroponics. im sure the IT dept has noticed, waiting for the MP's to show up at my house. they're more than welcome to see my pole beans and tomatoes in the back yard :)

You should use startpage dot com to do your searches. they proxy everything so nobody knows what you're doing.
Of course visiting sites through their proxy does limit quite a lot so I wouldn't recommend it for "acceptable" sites.