2WTK: Ring Doorbell and Police Partnerships

Our Take

WFMY News 2's 2 Wants to Know team dug into something that gets far less scrutiny than it deserves: the quiet handshake deals between police departments and Ring doorbell owners. These partnerships let cops request footage directly from residents, sometimes through apps that make sharing a single tap. It sounds neighborly until you realize it's building a privately-owned, crowdsourced camera network that police can tap into without a warrant, a court order, or much accountability to the people being recorded.

This is the same playbook we track with Flock Safety's ALPR cameras — normalize the tech as a "safety tool," get it into enough front yards or intersections, then quietly stitch it into a surveillance web that tracks ordinary people going about their day. Ring cameras watch porches and sidewalks; Flock cameras watch every car that passes a fixed point. Different hardware, same problem: private data flowing into government hands with minimal transparency about retention, access, or misuse.

If a Ring camera on your block worries you, it's worth asking what else is quietly logging your comings and goings. Check our map to see if Flock ALPRs are already posted near your home, and visit take action for concrete steps to push back on surveillance creep in your own city.