Amazon’s Ring to limit some video-sharing abilities with Wisconsin police departments
The short version: Ring is cutting police off from requesting Neighbors app footage directly, a real privacy win, but the surveillance dragnet Ring helped normalize hasn't gone anywhere.
Our Take
Credit where it's due: this is a genuine, if overdue, concession from Amazon. For years the Neighbors app functioned as a soft-power surveillance network, letting cops mass-request doorbell footage from residents without a warrant, often with a friendly tone that made it easy to say yes. Killing that in-app request tool removes a low-friction pipeline that turned entire neighborhoods into an opt-in dragnet, one camera at a time, per the reporting from Channel 3000 / News 3 Now.
But don't mistake this for Amazon getting out of the surveillance business. Ring cameras aren't disappearing, police can still get footage through subpoenas, warrants, or just knocking on a door and asking nicely, and Amazon has a long history of quietly rolling back privacy promises when it's convenient. This move trims one specific request pathway; it doesn't touch the millions of Ring devices still capable of being pulled into police investigations by other means.
The bigger picture hasn't changed: doorbell cameras are one piece of a sprawling automated surveillance apparatus that increasingly includes ALPR networks like Flock Safety, which log the movements of ordinary drivers with zero suspicion required. If you want to see how far that network has spread in your own area, check our map, and if you want to push back on it locally, our take-action page has next steps.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Channel 3000 / News 3 Now, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.