Ring partnerships with police: Solving crimes or invading privacy?

Our Take

KSHB 41's report lays out something we've been saying for years: when police departments partner with private surveillance companies, the public loses visibility into how their own neighborhoods are being watched. Ring's model — get residents to buy the cameras, then ask them to hand footage to cops through a slick request portal — turns thousands of private doorbells into a de facto policing network, all without a warrant requirement or a public vote on whether that network should exist.

This is the same playbook we track with license plate readers. Flock and Ring both rely on distributed private infrastructure, marketed as neighborhood safety tools, that quietly becomes government surveillance once a data-sharing agreement gets signed. The scale is different — Ring cameras watch porches, Flock cameras watch every car on the road — but the accountability gap is identical: no public debate, no meaningful audit trail, and mission creep that outpaces any policy written to contain it.

Credit to KSHB 41 for pushing on the privacy side of a story most outlets cover as a straightforward crime-fighting win. If you want to see how this same dynamic is playing out with ALPRs in your own town, check our camera map, and if you'd rather do something about it than just read about it, our take-action page has next steps.