Ring cuts ties with controversial police tech company after 'dystopian' Super Bowl ad sparks a huge backlash

• Ring is severing its ties with Flock Safety, linked to law enforcement
• Critics are accusing Ring of rolling out 'mass surveillance'
• A new Search Party advert has also raised concerns about privacy

Facing increasing criticism over its policies on privacy and data sharing, the Amazon-owned Ring has severed ties with surveillance tech company Flock Safety – although it may not be enough to appease many of its critics.

"We determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated," says Ring (via The Verge). "As a result, we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration."

Ring also confirmed the integration never actually launched, despite being announced last October, so no data has been sent between the two companies. Flock Safety is known to work with government and law enforcement agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

The Ring and Flock Safety partnership was part of Ring's Community Requests feature, where users can opt to share camera footage with local police to help in active investigations. That program is continuing, and Ring points out that it helped identify a key witness in the Brown University shooting in December 2025.

"We remain focused on building tools that empower neighbors to help one another while maintaining strong privacy protections and transparency about how our features work," says Ring. "We'll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety, and privacy."

With added facial recognition

A few days ago, Ring also released a new advert showing off its Search Party feature, which has drawn further complaints from critics, who described it as "dystopian" – although, like the Flock Safety integration, this isn't new and was unveiled last year.

The idea with Search Party is that if a dog goes missing, local Ring cameras are used to help spot it. It's enabled by default, so you need to opt out if you don't like it – but Ring says more than a dog a day has been found by Search Party since it launched.

Finding lost pooches is a laudable goal, but there are concerns that the same setup could easily be used to track people. US Senator Ed Markey has described Search Party as a "mass surveillance" system, especially given that Ring products can now be programmed to recognize familiar faces too.

Ring says facial recognition data is kept private and secure, and can improve security by letting you know if it's a family member or a stranger wandering about your property. It's also a feature available on other security cameras, including Google Nest Cams. However, users are far from convinced that Ring can be trusted.

The problem is not the advertised capabilities, but how they could be repurposed in the future, either with or without public knowledge – a debate on trust and privacy that will no doubt continue. It seems that plenty of people have already had enough of Ring's approach, and are returning their cameras.

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