The Infinite Brief

Amazon-owned Ring announced last week that it has “partnered” with more than 400 police departments across the U.S. to create the Neighbors Active Law Enforcement Map using the video feeds from doorbells bought, paid for, and installed by private citizens.

Ring operates a portal that allows police departments access to the video stream from innumerable Ring doorbells, which are outfitted with cameras to allow users to see who is there before answering the door.

Sine the cameras are installed by private citizens, the cost for law enforcement agencies is suddenly reduced to the logistics of maintaining the bandwidth to access the data.