A Super Bowl ad that sought to provide a new pet-finding feature for a popular doorbell camera product instead set off alarm bells among customers who fear that the technology could undermine privacy and be used by law enforcement. Now, the company behind the Ring camera is walking back its collaboration with a company that collaborates with law enforcement.
Super Bowl ad led to backlash, fear of ‘state-sponsored surveillance’ through Ring
Ring, the Amazon-owned company behind the popular doorbell camera device and service, announced Thursday that it was cancelling its collaboration with Flock Safety, which provides tech services for law enforcement agencies, including automatic license plate readers. The partnership between Ring and Flock gained attention after a Ring Super Bowl ad sparked alarm among viewers, and the move to cancel the Flock collaboration comes as the joint venture faced scrutiny following Ring’s Super Bowl ad. The commercial debuted a new “Search Party” feature, by which Ring cameras in a given neighborhood could be mobilized to find missing pets by using image recognition software.
The Search Party ad drew significant negative reactions against Ring and its partnership with Flock. Critics warned that the new feature, rather than being limited to finding lost pets, would instead enable law enforcement agencies to implement a virtual surveillance state through Ring customers’ privately owned devices.
“A reminder before you sign up for @ring‘s state-sponsored surveillance marketed under the guise of ‘looking for a lost dog’. Please, please, please don’t sign up for that service,” Indiana Fever executive Jackie Maynard wrote in a typical reaction to the commercial.
Some suggested the technology could contribute to racial profiling.
“White people will use this for racist purposes,” womanist writer Dr. Allison Wiltz posted.
Ring and Flock face questions about privacy and law enforcement access to technology
The negative publicity from the Super Bowl ad brought renewed scrutiny to Ring and Flock, which had announced their collaboration in October, over each company’s work with law enforcement. Although Flock doesn’t work directly with federal law enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the company has worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Furthermore, Flock’s technology is indirectly used by these agencies through requests made by local law enforcement agencies. Ring also has a history of providing footage to law enforcement agencies, sometimes in exchange for promotion of Ring products by these agencies. These collaborations have raised serious concerns from privacy advocates, law enforcement watchdog groups, and Ring customers. In the wake of the Super Bowl ad, several Ring subscribers canceled their service, with some customers disconnecting or even destroying their Ring devices.
Meanwhile, Ring’s parent company and its founder, Jeff Bezos, have also come under fire for seemingly bowing to pressure from the Trump administration at numerous points during President Donald Trump’s second term. Ring didn’t directly reference public controversy in its decision to drop its collaboration with Flock. In a public statement, Ring attributed the cancellation of the partnership to technical considerations, writing in a blog post, “Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.” Based on these considerations, Ring wrote, “we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration.”
Despite Ring’s assertion that practical concerns led the company to back away from its work with Flock, the decision comes as both companies face serious questions about the use of their products by local and federal law enforcement agencies. With the backlash from the Super Bowl commercial amplifying criticism and cancellations of Ring services, Amazon has decided to change course, although significant underlying concerns about the use of its technology remain.