Ring limits police access to your security footage—here's what to know (2024)

Amazon’s Ring is finally taking user privacy a little more seriously with its announcement that it is removing the “Request for Assistance” feature from Ring Neighbors platform—essentially meaning that law enforcement agencies will no longer be able to request footage from Ring as easily.

At first glance, you might assume that this move doesn’t mean much for you, but it could have a significant impact on how Ring handles your data. Here’s everything you need to know.

What is the Ring Neighbor network?

Neighbors is essentially a community social network, operated by Ring. If you’ve used Nextdoor, you know what Neighbors is. You can create posts about your community, network with neighbors, and so on.

Ring also serves as a way for organizations to interact with community members. For example, law enforcement agencies can create posts about local crimes, and weather agencies can alert users to upcoming storms. At its best, the Ring Neighbors network can be a helpful resource for staying up to date with what’s going on in your community.

What is Ring's "Request for Assistance" feature?

Request for Assistance is a feature built into Neighbors, allowing law enforcement agencies to request user data straight from the community.

Critics, like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, have long seen the feature as a way for Ring to facilitate warrantless requests for user footage, making blanket police surveillance more prevalent. To be clear, in the case of the Request for Assistance feature, users had to consent for their footage to be sent to law enforcement.

Can law enforcement still access my Ring data?

In some cases, yes. Ring says that it will still cooperate with law enforcement when a search warrant is present, and Ring still has the right to share user data without consent. Ring said in an interview with The Verge that police can request footage in “emergencies” without obtaining a search warrant—making when and how law enforcement obtain footage arguably less transparent than before.

If you’re concerned about privacy, it’s worth buying security cameras that offer end-to-end encryption—which would prevent even Ring from accessing the footage. Ring offers end-to-end encryption on some of its cameras, like the Ring Video Doorbell 4 and the Ring Video Doorbell Pro 2.

However, this feature is opt-in, so you’ll have to manually enable it. Even so, you’ll lose out on some features if you enable it, like the ability to view footage through the web portal and the ability to see previews in the Dashboard.

Prices were accurate at the time this article was published but may change over time.