Ring has canceled its plans to partner with Flock Safety on a doorbell camera system that critics have labeled a privacy concern. The Amazon-owned company announced the collaboration with Flock Safety’s platform in October. It said the integration would increase the effectiveness of its “Communi ty Requests” feature, which enables users to “respond to requests for help from local public safety agencies” as they work to collect evidence and investigate crime. Flock Safety is primarily known for its automated license plate readers used by law enforcement to track suspect vehicles. Its other services include drones, gunshot detection and alerts for missing people. Flock has come under fire for its AI surveillance and “spying” technology, which the American Civil Liberties Union says has been “used by ICE to help carry out the Trump administration’s abusive removal program.” The organization also claims that Flock’s system was used by a police officer in Texas to “search nationwide for a woman who’d had a self-administered abortion,” which is illegal in the state. Ring on Friday assured the public their new collaboration was being shelved. “Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,” the company said in a statement. “As a result, we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration. The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.” Ring added that it plans to continue working on products that offer users the ability to share videos with law enforcement if they so choose. “We’ll continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety and privacy,” Ring said. Flock Safety confirmed in a statement that its partnership with Ring was canceled and said no customer videos had been shared. Both companies have denied providing data to ICE. Friday’s announcement follows a controversial Super Bowl commercial that advertised Ring’s “Search Party” feature, which uses AI to cover entire neighborhoods and, among other things, help find lost pets. The ad showed users how punching in a description of a missing pet could signal Ring’s units to work with one another to track down that animal, but it raised a lot of questions on social media. “If they can identify a dog, they can identify you,” one critic wrote on the ad’s YouTube page. “And your kids,” said another. While surveillance technology has sparked debate across the country, particularly in regard to ICE operations, video taken from doorbell cameras have proven useful to investigators. Images retrieved from the home of Savannah Guthrie’s missing mother provided the first big break in a nearly two-week criminal investigation that appeared to have otherwise made no progress. Information later retrieved from another camera a few miles away also piqued the interest of law enforcement. ...read more read less