Ring will no longer allow police to request doorbell camera footage from users

Our Take

Credit where it's due: as 10 Tampa Bay News reports, Amazon's Ring is shutting down the feature that let police departments blast out requests for your doorbell footage without a warrant. That tool turned millions of homeowners into an informal, opt-in surveillance network — one cop could ask, and Ring would ping you to hand over clips. Killing it is a real, if overdue, privacy win, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

But let's not get distracted. This move addresses one company's one product. It does nothing about the automated license plate reader cameras that are popping up on utility poles and intersections in neighborhoods across the country, quietly logging every car that passes — where you go, when, how often — and feeding it into shared law enforcement databases with far less public debate than Ring ever got. Flock Safety alone has thousands of these cameras running, and most residents have no idea they're there until they go looking.

The lesson here isn't 'problem solved,' it's that public pressure works — Ring changed course because people pushed back. The same pressure needs to land on ALPR deployments in your own city council meetings. Check our map to see what's already watching your street, and hit take action if you want to do something about it before it becomes as normalized as doorbell cams once were.