Ring is no longer giving law enforcement direct access to its customers’ doorbell videos

Our Take

Credit to KSAT 12 for flagging this one: Ring is shutting down the "Request for Assistance" feature that let police departments blast out video requests directly to nearby doorbell cameras. For years this was the backbone of countless "community safety" partnerships — cops didn't need a warrant, they just needed a neighborhood full of Ring owners willing to click "share." Killing that pipeline is a genuine, if overdue, privacy win, and it's worth acknowledging when a surveillance-adjacent company actually walks something back instead of expanding it.

But let's not get carried away. Police can still get Ring footage the old-fashioned way — subpoenas, warrants, emergency requests to Amazon itself. What's disappearing is the frictionless, mass-request model that turned entire blocks into ad hoc surveillance dragnets without judicial oversight. That's meaningful, but it's a single company changing one feature, not a policy shift across the surveillance industry.

And while Ring backs off, ALPR networks like Flock Safety are barreling in the opposite direction — blanketing towns with cameras that log every plate, every car, every trip, no doorbell click required, often with zero public vote or oversight. If you want to see how far that's already spread in your area, check our camera map, and if you'd rather your city not sign up for the next version of this, see what you can do on our take-action page.