It's more that police will use it for their own personal inquiries- to track their girlfriends, potential girlfriends etc. This happens enough already with license plate readers:
- Sedgwick, Kansas (2024): Former Police Chief Lee Nygaard resigned after it was discovered he used Flock cameras to track his ex-girlfriend and her new partner 228 times over four months, according to The Wichita Eagle and KAKE.
- Menasha, Wisconsin (Jan 2026): Officer Cristian Morales was charged with misconduct in office for allegedly using the Flock system to track his ex-girlfriend, WLUK-TV reported. Morales admitted to using the system due to "desperation" and "bad judgment".
- Orange City, Florida (2025): Officer Jarmarus Brown was charged with stalking after reportedly running his girlfriend's license plate 69 times, her mother's 24 times, and her brother's 15 times over seven months, the Miami Herald reported.
- San Diego, California (2021): Sergeant Mariusz Czas was arrested for stalking his ex-girlfriend using police resources
> It's more that police will use it for their own personal inquiries- to track their girlfriends, potential girlfriends etc.
That's far from my biggest concern. Sure, cops stalking people/carrying out personal vendettas is not good.
But a little creativity will allow far far greater abuses. Here's one: imagine the current administration deciding they need to debank the great and powerful terrorist organization Antifa. Ring data on protest attendance is a great help in building a list of those rotten domestic terrorists.
All of these seem like examples of oversight working, and penalties being applied? We obviously don't know the rate at which abuse like this is detected, but if it's high, this seems like a healthy system working as intended?
More likely - a quiet update changing opt-in to opt-out. They can repeat this update as many times as they want and each time, a few more people will miss the email. They can also hold your data hostage, i.e. "All data now and historical will be included in our partner sharing unless you delete it all."
That's all fine and good until we hear "oops, turns out all the customer video feeds were streaming to our cop accessible servers 24/7!".
I don't believe Ring's claims (or flock etc etc) for one second.