Ring has canceled its partnership with Flock Safety, after receiving backlash for running a Super Bowl ad about its Search Party feature. If you recall, Ring revealed in October 2025 that it was partnering with the surveillance company to make it possible for law enforcement to ask smart doorbell owners for video captured by their devices. In its announcement, the company said that “the planned Swarm Security integration will require far more time and resources than anticipated.” The decision to end the partnership was mutual and the integration of Flock Safety had never begun, Ring said. Apparently, no Ring customer footage was ever sent to Flock.
Under the partnership, law enforcement agencies using Flock’s Nova platform or FlockOS will be able to use Ring’s community requests to solicit doorbell video from users. They will be asked to specify the location and time frame of the incident, as well as provide a unique investigation code and details about what is being investigated. Their requests will then be forwarded to the relevant users, who can choose to share footage from their doorbell. Ring said the entire process would have been anonymous and optional.
Ring is known to have shared security cam videos with law enforcement without a court order or device owner’s consent at least 11 times in the past. However, in 2024 he seemed to have walked back his police-friendly stance and said he would stop sharing videos with police without a warrant. This alliance with Flock would have marked a return to police cooperation after the company distanced itself from law enforcement. Flock is known for its automated license plate readers and centralizing the information collected into a database that police can search without a warrant. While law enforcement says the system can help them solve crimes like kidnapping. 404media Last year it was reported that ICE was using the database to cite immigration-related reasons.
While Ring’s official reason was that the Flock partnership would require more resources than expected, it’s worth noting that the company recently faced criticism for its Super Bowl Search Party ad. Ring described it as a way to find lost dogs using its camera’s AI, which identifies pets walking in their field of vision and then stitches the feeds together to identify missing pets. Although Search Party is not new and was announced last year, the ad sparked concerns about surveillance and how the technology could be misused, leading users to disable the feature entirely for their cameras.
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