In a recent development, Amazon’s Ring, known for its smart doorbells, has ended its collaboration with Flock Safety, a company specializing in police surveillance technology. This decision comes amid public concern over privacy and surveillance, which gained momentum following a Ring advertisement during the Super Bowl. The ad depicted a lost dog being located via a network of cameras, stirring fears of an intrusive surveillance state.
Interestingly, the controversial feature showcased in the ad, called Search Party, was not connected to Flock Safety. Despite the timing, Ring’s official statement did not reference the advertisement as a catalyst for the “joint decision” to discontinue the partnership with Flock.
Previously, Ring and Flock Safety had announced their intention to collaborate on a feature that would allow Ring camera users to share video footage in response to law enforcement requests. This was to be facilitated through Ring’s Community Requests feature, enabling a more streamlined communication channel between users and law enforcement.
However, a statement from Ring clarified, “Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.” They reassured customers by stating, “The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”
“Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,” Ring’s statement said.
“The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”
Beyond the Flock partnership, Ring has faced other surveillance concerns.
In the Super Bowl ad, a lost dog is found with Ring’s Search Party feature, which the company says can “reunite lost dogs with their families and track wildfires threatening your community.” The clip depicts the dog being tracked by cameras throughout a neighborhood using artificial intelligence.
And viewers took to social media to criticize it for being sinister, leaving many wondering if it would be used to track humans and saying they would turn the feature off.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focus on civil liberties related to digital technology, said this week that Americans should feel unsettled over the potential loss of privacy.
“Amazon Ring already integrates biometric identification, like face recognition, into its products via features like “Familiar Faces,” which depends on scanning the faces of those in sight of the camera and matching it against a list of pre-saved, pre-approved faces,” the Foundation wrote Tuesday. “It doesn’t take much to imagine Ring eventually combining these two features: face recognition and neighborhood searches.”
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