Amazon cancels Ring-Flock deal amid privacy backlash
Amazon said it has scrapped plans to link its Ring doorbell cameras to the police tech company Flock Safety. The decision comes amid mounting criticism over privacy concerns, just days after Amazon aired a Ring ad during the Super Bowl, which renewed scrutiny.
The proposed partnership, announced in October, would have introduced a feature called “community requests” that would allow Ring users to opt in and share doorbell footage with law enforcement. The program had yet to launch.
Super Bowl ad sparks privacy concerns
During the Super Bowl on Sunday, Amazon aired a commercial promoting a program similar to community requests, but it allowed Ring users to share doorbell camera video to help find lost dogs. The program, called Search Party, received significant criticism online.
Many users noted that the same cameras used for Search Party could be paired with facial recognition technology, allowing users and police to track people. Flock had no connection to the Search Party program.
Following the commercial, Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., wrote a letter to Amazon calling the commercial and technology “creepy.”
Companies end partnership
On Thursday, just days after the commercial aired, Amazon and Flock both announced their partnership had been canceled.
“We can confirm that Flock’s intended integration with Community Requests has been cancelled,” an Amazon spokesperson told NBC News. “This integration was never live, and no videos were ever shared between these services. Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint decision to cancel the integration.”
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Flock posted a similar statement online, saying, “The planned integration between Flock and Ring’s Community Request tool has been canceled. The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock.”
Flock added that it believed the decision allows both companies to best serve their customers and communities.
“Flock remains dedicated to supporting law enforcement agencies with tools that are fully configurable to local laws and policies, and we continue to engage directly with public officials and community leaders,” the site said.
Neither company directly linked the move to backlash over the ad.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
