Amazon ends planned collaboration with controversial police-tech firm after backlash over Ring’s Super Bowl ad
Amazon has pulled back from plans to connect its Ring doorbell cameras with the police surveillance company Flock Safety, the two firms said on Thursday, just days after Amazon aired a Ring ad that many viewers saw as framing the technology as a privacy risk.
The proposed deal, announced in October, would have let Ring users share doorbell video with police in certain situations via a program called Community Requests. The arrangement had not yet launched.
The controversy centered on a separate Super Bowl ad from Ring that highlighted a feature similar to Community Requests, named Search Party, which would enable Ring users to share video to help locate lost dogs. Critics pointed out that Ring cameras can be paired with facial recognition tech and could be used to track people. That feature was not part of the Flock partnership.
Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) sent an open letter to Amazon, labeling the commercial as creepy and raising privacy concerns.
Both Flock and Amazon confirmed the partnership has been canceled, describing it as a mutual decision.
“We can confirm that Flock’s intended integration with Community Requests has been cancelled,” an Amazon spokesperson said. “The integration was never live, and no videos were ever shared between these services. After a thorough review, we determined the Flock integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated, so we jointly decided to cancel.”
Flock stated on its site that the planned integration with Ring’s Community Request tool was canceled and that it never launched, so no Ring customer videos were shared with Flock. The company added that the decision lets both firms better serve their respective customers and communities while continuing to work with public officials and community leaders.
Flock has built a large footprint in U.S. surveillance, known for thousands of license plate reader cameras that record and identify cars by their plates in real time. Critics have raised concerns that Flock’s system creates a centralized database accessible to participating police nationwide, potentially without warrants, and may enable sharing with federal agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some communities have ended their Flock contracts over such worries.
Doorbell cameras have become increasingly common in the United States; Parks Associates estimates about 27% of households use them, with Ring by far the most popular brand.
Amazon continues to maintain a contract that links its Community Requests feature with Axon, another prominent policing tech company.
Kevin Collier reports on cybersecurity, privacy, and technology policy for NBC News.
