{"id":1138,"date":"2026-02-13T11:17:17","date_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/13\/ring-calls-off-partnership-with-police-surveillance-provider-flock-safety\/"},"modified":"2026-02-13T11:17:17","modified_gmt":"2026-02-13T03:17:17","slug":"ring-calls-off-partnership-with-police-surveillance-provider-flock-safety","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/2026\/02\/13\/ring-calls-off-partnership-with-police-surveillance-provider-flock-safety\/","title":{"rendered":"Ring calls off partnership with police surveillance provider Flock Safety"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ring has canceled its partnership with Flock Safety, after receiving backlash for running a Super Bowl ad touting its Search Party feature. If you\u2019ll recall, Ring revealed back in October 2025 that it was entering a partnership<\/a> with the surveillance company, which would make it possible for law enforcement to ask smart doorbell owners for videos captured by their devices. In its announcement<\/a>, the company said that the \u201cplanned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.\u201d The decision to call off the partnership was mutual, Ring added, and Flock Safety\u2019s integration was never launched. Apparently, no Ring customer footage was ever sent to Flock. <\/p>\n

Under the partnership, law enforcement agencies using Flock’s Nova platform or FlockOS would have been able to use Ring\u2019s Community Requests to ask for doorbell videos from users. They would have been asked to specify the location and timeframe of the incident, as well as provide a unique investigation code and the details about what is being investigated. Their requests would then be forwarded to relevant users, who could choose to share footage from their doorbell. Ring said the whole process would have been anonymous and optional. <\/p>\n

Ring was known to have shared security cam videos<\/a> to law enforcement without a court order or the device owner\u2019s consent at least 11 times in the past. In 2024, however, it seemed to have walked back<\/a> its police-friendly stance and said that it would stop sharing videos with the police without a warrant. This alliance with Flock would have marked a return to police collaboration after the company distanced itself from law enforcement. Flock is known for its automatic license plate readers and for centralizing the information it collects into a database that police can search without a warrant. While law enforcement says the system can help them solve crimes like kidnapping. 404Media<\/em><\/a> reported last year that ICE has been using the database, citing immigration-related reasons. <\/p>\n

While Ring\u2019s official reason was that the Flock partnership would need more resources than expected, it\u2019s worth noting that the company recently got flak for its Super Bowl Search Party ad. Ring touted it as a way to find lost dogs by using its cameras\u2019 AI to identify pets running across their field of vision and then pooling feeds together to identify missing pets. While Search Party isn\u2019t new and was announced last year, the ad sparked concerns about surveillance and how the tech could be misused, leading users to disable<\/a> the feature for their cameras altogether. <\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https:\/\/www.engadget.com\/home\/ring-calls-off-partnership-with-police-surveillance-provider-flock-safety-031717605.html?src=rss<\/p>

Please credit: OBA Blog<\/a> » Ring calls off partnership with police surveillance provider Flock Safety<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ring has canceled its partnership with Flock Safety, after receiving backlash for running a Super Bowl ad touting its Search Party feature. If you\u2019ll recall, Ring revealed back in October 2025 that it was entering a partnership with the surveillance company, which would make it possible for law enforcement to ask smart doorbell owners for videos captured by their devices. In its announcement, the company said that the \u201cplanned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.\u201d The decision to call off the partnership was mutual, Ring added, and Flock Safety\u2019s integration was never launched. Apparently, no Ring customer footage was ever sent to Flock. Under the partnership, law enforcement agencies using Flock’s Nova platform or FlockOS would have been able […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-share"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/obagg.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}