Ring cancels surveillance partnership with Flock Safety
Ring canceled its partnership with surveillance company Flock Safety, announced in October 2025, because the integration required more time and resources than anticipated. The mutual decision occurred after backlash from a Super Bowl advertisement, with no integration launched and no customer footage shared.
Ring revealed the partnership in October 2025 to enable law enforcement access to doorbell videos through Flock Safety’s platforms. The company stated in its announcement that the “planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.” Ring confirmed the decision to end the partnership was mutual. The integration never launched, ensuring no Ring customer footage was sent to Flock Safety at any point.
The planned partnership involved law enforcement agencies using Flock’s Nova platform or FlockOS to submit Community Requests for doorbell videos. Agencies would specify the location and timeframe of the incident, provide a unique investigation code, and include details about the investigation. These requests would forward to relevant Ring users, who could choose whether to share their footage. Ring described the process as anonymous and optional for users.
Ring previously shared security camera videos with law enforcement without a court order or device owner consent on at least 11 occasions. In 2024, the company changed this practice and announced it would stop sharing videos with police without a warrant. The proposed Flock Safety partnership would have represented a resumption of collaboration with law enforcement following this period of distance.
Flock Safety operates automatic license-plate readers that collect data into a centralized database searchable by police without a warrant. Law enforcement agencies describe the system as aiding in solving crimes such as kidnapping. A 404Media report from the previous year detailed that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) accessed Flock’s database for immigration-related investigations.
Ring’s official explanation for canceling the partnership centered on the unanticipated resource demands. The company recently encountered criticism over its Super Bowl advertisement promoting the Search Party feature. This feature, announced the previous year, employs artificial intelligence on Ring cameras to identify lost pets within their field of vision. The AI pools feeds from multiple cameras to locate missing animals. The advertisement raised surveillance concerns among users, prompting some to disable the Search Party feature on their devices entirely.