Days After Its Super Bowl Ad, Ring Cancels Partnership Amid Monitoring Concerns
Doorbell and smart home device maker Ring announced on Friday that it has canceled its partnership with Flock Safety. came in last yearamid backlash that peaked following Ring’s Super Bowl ad on Feb. 8.
The commercial was for Ring’s youth Search for the party feature aimed at helping pet owners find lost dogs. But instead of generating warm fuzzies among pet owners, the ad drew attention attention and scrutiny on Ring’s privacy practices, particularly its relationships with law enforcement agencies.
Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based hardware and software manufacturer that includes license plate readers, drones and video surveillance cameras. The company works with 5,000 law enforcement agencies, according to its website.
The withdrawal of the partnership comes at a time when there have been many protests across the US in response to the repressive and violent actions of Moral Development and other government agencies, including in cities like Minneapolis.
Flock denies sharing data with ICE, and Ring said it decided to end the relationship before it began, insisting it never sent videos to Flock as part of its Public Requests program. “After a thorough review, we have determined that the planned Herd Safety integration will require more time and resources than we anticipated,” the blog said.
It doesn’t mention public pressure as such, though there have been reports of users disconnecting their Ring devices or destroying them because of the Super Bowl ad.
The closest the blog post comes to acknowledging the public relations issue is the last line: “We will continue to carefully evaluate future relationships to ensure they meet our standards of customer trust, security and privacy.”
While the Flock relationship died, Amazon also entered into a relationship with Axon, which makes Taser devices and works with law enforcement agencies. It also continues to provide Ring cloud videos to law enforcement upon request.
This week, Jamie Siminoff, the founder of Ring discussed the kidnapping case of Nancy Guthrie with CBS News, saying that unlike the cameras of the competitor Nest, the company will not be able to restore the video deleted from the Ring camera account.
He added, however, that the video obtained by Nest was “amazing” and useful in the investigation of crimes like this one. He talked about Public Notices, which law enforcement can issue through the Ring network of doorbell camera owners.
In the interview, a different video taken by a Ring camera five miles away from Guthrie’s home in Tucson was shown that may be related to the kidnapping. Siminoff would not comment on the video, but said the technology could be useful in piecing together information to investigate crimes.
Police “need programs like ours, like Community Alerts, to be able to talk and ask neighbors about this,” Siminoff said. “And we need the neighbors to feel comfortable that their privacy is protected, but also that they can help share and hopefully lead to finding the suspect and bringing Nancy home.”
A Ring representative told CNET that there are no other changes to the Ring Community Applications program.
