Ring cancels partnership with police surveillance tech company after Super Bowl ad backlash
The short version: Ring dropped its Flock Safety integration after public blowback over a Super Bowl ad, showing that consumer pressure can still make surveillance partnerships too toxic to keep.
Our Take
ABC7's report on Ring severing ties with Flock Safety is a small but telling data point in the surveillance debate: even a company built on selling doorbell cameras to your neighbors apparently decided that formally piping footage into a nationwide ALPR and video-sharing network was a bridge too far once the public actually noticed. That's not Amazon suddenly discovering privacy principles — it's a brand protecting itself after a Super Bowl ad turned into a PR liability.
What this really confirms is how quietly these partnerships get built in the first place. Flock has spent years stitching together police departments, HOAs, and private companies into one searchable surveillance web, banking on the fact that most people never hear about the integration until a commercial forces it into the open. When the backlash is loud enough, companies fold fast — which says the appetite for this kind of tracking is nowhere near as settled as Flock's sales pitch suggests.
One canceled partnership doesn't dismantle the network already running in thousands of towns. If you want to see how far Flock's camera footprint has spread near you, check our map, and if you'd rather push back than just watch, our take-action page has concrete steps for your city council meeting.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of ABC7, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.