FBI Weighs Ring Cam Risk: Big Brother's Watching You, You're Watching Big Brother Too
The short version: Bill Whittle's Ring-cam video shows surveillance can cut both ways for consumer doorbell cams, but Flock's ALPR network offers citizens no such reciprocity.
Our Take
Bill Whittle and Scott Ott make a fair point: Ring cameras let homeowners watch the watchers, giving ordinary people a small sliver of visibility into how law enforcement operates on their own property. That's a genuine, if limited, check on power — you own the camera, you control the footage, and you can at least see the raid coming.
Flock Safety's ALPR network is the mirror opposite of that arrangement. There's no reciprocity, no homeowner controlling the feed, and no way for the person driving past a Flock camera to know who's pulling their plate data, how long it's stored, or which agencies are trading access to it behind the scenes. The FBI's own ambivalence about Ring, cited in this video, only underscores how differently law enforcement treats camera networks it doesn't control versus ones it does.
That asymmetry is exactly why we built our camera map — because the least Americans deserve is to know where these ALPR eyes are pointed, since we can't check the footage the way a Ring owner can. If you want to push back on a system with none of the accountability Whittle describes, start with our take-action guide.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Bill Whittle, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.