Public backlash has forced Ring to cancel its partnership with Flock Safety, the law enforcement surveillance company whose camera network has reportedly given ICE and other federal agencies access to footage across the country.
Ring announced the cancellation this week, saying the integration never went live.
The company’s statement was careful:
“Following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. We therefore made the joint decision to cancel the integration and continue with our current partners…The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”
That last sentence is doing a lot of work. Ring users responding to the Flock announcement went further than strongly worded tweets. People smashed cameras. Others announced publicly that they were throwing their devices away. The Amazon-owned company had badly misread the moment.
Flock Safety is a surveillance technology company that operates a nationwide network of AI-powered cameras, primarily known for license plate readers, and sells access to the resulting database of vehicle movements to roughly 5,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.
The Flock partnership was announced back in October 2025, and you may remember the feature report How Amazon Is Turning Your Neighborhood Into a Police Database, which gave deeper insight into the plans.
It got pushback at the time, but only became a bigger crisis after the recent outrage some cities have shown to ICE enforcement activity, when social media posts claimed Ring was providing a direct pipeline through Flock to ICE.
That specific claim isn’t accurate, since the Flock connection never went live. But Ring’s broader relationship with the police is real and extensive, which gave the fear enough traction to land.
Hellbound and Down 