Flock Partners with Ring – “It’s a Warrantless Day in the Neighborhood!”

​Amazon’s Ring doorbell cameras are the always-on eyes of the American neighborhood. Owners are free to provide to police images related to suspected crimes, whether a porch pirate or a prowling burglar. But they can also share images of a lawful protest, or turn over warrantless evidence against a targeted individual.
 
Ring is one link in the expanding national chain of visual surveillance. Added to closed-circuit television systems and police-monitored surveillance cameras sold by the tech company Flock Safety, all the elements of a national surveillance system are falling into place.
 
Now, one more element has just been secured with a new partnership between Ring and Flock. Elissa Welle of The Verge reports that “local U.S. law enforcement agencies that use Flock’s platforms Nova or FlockOS can request video footage from Ring users through the Neighbors app.”
 
There is some good news: In the request, Ring says that law enforcement must include details about an alleged crime and its time and location. Individual users still get to decide for themselves whether to respond to a police request for video. And law enforcement cannot see who does or does not respond, limiting the potential for pressure tactics. Still, the integration of Flock – which sells automated license plate readers capable of tracking cars nationwide – into the doorbells of America should be a matter of deep concern.
 
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) told Flock’s management in a letter:
 
“I now believe that abuses of your product are not only likely but inevitable, and that Flock is unable and uninterested in preventing them. In my view, local elected officials can best protect their constituents from the inevitable abuses of Flock cameras by removing Flock from their communities.”
 
The partnership of Flock with Ring is even more troubling in light of Amazon’s reversal of reforms it made in 2024. The company had previously pulled its app feature, which had allowed police to remotely ask for and obtain footage from Ring users. Now, Ring is reinstating the feature, once again making it easy for police to solicit warrantless video from homeowners without a warrant. New policies will also allow police to request live-stream access.
 
Flock does not currently apply facial recognition to its images. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, reports that internal Ring documents show an appetite to integrate artificial intelligence – including, perhaps, video analytics and facial recognition software – into its product.
 
Step by step, corporations are working with each other and with government to link technologies to create a national surveillance system. What may be used for commendable purposes today can be used for any purpose tomorrow.

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