Ring Cancels Its Partnership With Flock Safety After Surveillance Backlash (theverge.com) 41
Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration. From a report: In a statement published on Ring's blog and provided to The Verge ahead of publication, the company said: "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."
[...] Over the last few weeks, the company has faced significant public anger over its connection to Flock, with Ring users being encouraged to smash their cameras, and some announcing on social media that they are throwing away their Ring devices. The Flock partnership was announced last October, but following recent unrest across the country related to ICE activities, public pressure against the Amazon-owned Ring's involvement with the company started to mount. Flock has reportedly allowed ICE and other federal agencies to access its network of surveillance cameras, and influencers across social media have been claiming that Ring is providing a direct link to ICE.
[...] Over the last few weeks, the company has faced significant public anger over its connection to Flock, with Ring users being encouraged to smash their cameras, and some announcing on social media that they are throwing away their Ring devices. The Flock partnership was announced last October, but following recent unrest across the country related to ICE activities, public pressure against the Amazon-owned Ring's involvement with the company started to mount. Flock has reportedly allowed ICE and other federal agencies to access its network of surveillance cameras, and influencers across social media have been claiming that Ring is providing a direct link to ICE.
Corporate Speak (Score:4, Insightful)
Ring said: "[...] we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated."
Translation: "We're gonna lose a ton of customers and then get our butts sued off by the ones that are left."
Re:Corporate Speak (Score:5, Informative)
Ring said: "[...] we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated."
Translation: "We're gonna lose a ton of customers and then get our butts sued off by the ones that are left."
Reality: "Society is just a tad too concerned about privacy. That generation is dying off, so we'll try this shit again in 6 months. And then again in 6 months. And again. Soon, an ignorant society will see it our way."
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Alternate Translation: That Super Bowl ad with the dog rescue thing kinda backfired on us. We'll try again in six months when nobody is paying attention with just some small modifications to the privacy policy contract. Let's hope that nobody important notices.
It's not just that Flock works with police / ICE (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger issue is, it's become pretty obvious Flock gives these entities access to their cameras and images regardless of the existence of a warrant - and without getting permission from (or even notifying) the Flock customer who's paying for the camera.
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Of course Flock gives LEO access to everything frictionlessly. Their main business is selling ALPR systems to LEO and related local government, so the pitch will be buy ALPR and we give you access to all this other coverage.
okay so they don't partner with flock (Score:2)
They just sell direct
I mean they've got all the data they've got a brazilion computers to store and process that data.
What do they need flock for in the first place?
Smash their Ring cameras? (Score:4, Interesting)
Earlier the previous evening, my Ring camera managed to capture the neighbor's teenager backing into my parked work van. Thanks to the camera, I've got timestamped footage footage of both the before and after. Now, you might be thinking to yourself "Surely they owned up to their mistake and you don't need surveillance footage?" Nope, the parent/guardian was extremely belligerent about the whole thing, with a main character attitude like their kid was just playing GTA and hitting a NPC's parked car is no big deal.
So no, I won't be smashing my Ring camera. We need these things because some people no longer do the right thing even when you've got them on video. I used to wonder why almost everyone in Russia seemed to have a dashcam - now I completely understand why.
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"We need these things because some people no longer do the right thing even when you've got them on video."
What for? If people don't give a fuck you might as well do without.
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What for?
Then you turn the footage over to the authorities. I suppose if you're the sort to just turn the other cheek when other people damage or steal things from your property, then no, you wouldn't need cameras. With the ubiquity of cheap surveillance equipment these days though, you're practically making yourself a target if you opt out. Which house do you think the porch pirates are going to pick when you're the only one on your street who doesn't have a camera pointed at their front steps?
I don't hate the c
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This "lack of accountability" isn't a new thing.
A friend of mine was murdered by two teenage shitheads street racing an F150 and Tundra through residential streets, not stopping at stop signs when one of them t-boned my friend in his work pickup, killing him instantly. At the trial, the kid's PARENTS were giving my friend's family dirty looks, as if it was my friend's fault that they killed him.
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"We need these things because some people no longer do the right thing even when you've got them on video."
What for? If people don't give a fuck you might as well do without.
retard detector....
Would be nice if we could just add that to object detection and get a nice bounding box and maybe an alert.
Re:Smash their Ring cameras? (Score:5, Insightful)
Earlier the previous evening, my Ring camera managed to capture the neighbor's teenager backing into my parked work van. Thanks to the camera, I've got timestamped footage footage of both the before and after. Now, you might be thinking to yourself "Surely they owned up to their mistake and you don't need surveillance footage?" Nope, the parent/guardian was extremely belligerent about the whole thing, with a main character attitude like their kid was just playing GTA and hitting a NPC's parked car is no big deal.
So no, I won't be smashing my Ring camera. We need these things because some people no longer do the right thing even when you've got them on video. I used to wonder why almost everyone in Russia seemed to have a dashcam - now I completely understand why.
There is nothing wrong with this use-case, and that's exactly the kind of scenario they're marketed for. For you to protect you.
Now, take another scenario into consideration. A string of B&Es has been happening in the area. Your kid goes out with some buddies and comes home at a time near when a neighbor gets broken into. LEOs pull footage and the only evidence they can find of anyone in the area is your kid. So they start scrutinizing them. And it goes South. These things absolutely do happen. Law-enforcement will focus on what evidence they do have over evidence they don't have. You should have the option to turn over any footage when someone knocks on your door, asking. Not because some default checkbox sends your footage to be scraped at-will.
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Law-enforcement will focus on what evidence they do have over evidence they don't have.
A recent example:
https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
https://electrek.co/2025/10/30... [electrek.co]
https://coloradosun.com/2025/1... [coloradosun.com]
Re: Smash their Ring cameras? (Score:2)
They're cheap AF. After some performative smashing, Amazon backed down, and now you can buy a new one (+1 bonus point for consumerism!)
The system works, people!
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Earlier the previous evening, my Ring camera managed to capture the neighbor's teenager backing into my parked work van. Thanks to the camera, I've got timestamped footage footage of both the before and after. Now, you might be thinking to yourself "Surely they owned up to their mistake and you don't need surveillance footage?" Nope, the parent/guardian was extremely belligerent about the whole thing, with a main character attitude like their kid was just playing GTA and hitting a NPC's parked car is no big deal.
So no, I won't be smashing my Ring camera. We need these things because some people no longer do the right thing even when you've got them on video. I used to wonder why almost everyone in Russia seemed to have a dashcam - now I completely understand why.
This is not a new thing, especially in the US.
The idea that people owned up to things because it is the right thing to do hasn't been true for my entire life, probably far longer than that.
It's a result of our ultra capitalist society, altruism is one of the first victims of extremism.
However no-one embodies the quality more than faceless, well protected corporations. I have a dash cam (AU/UK) because if I'm involved in a car crash I want to be able to prove beyond doubt it wasn't me, people will l
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If you really are interested in having surveillance around your house (which I completely understand), you could lo
Re: Smash their Ring cameras? (Score:2)
I put one camera up(not ring and locked down) because my 80 year old neighbor was snooping. I got video of her walking onto our porch staring through the windows and trying the door she then step off the porch without a step and walked away. She can barely walk if she took that big step down onto soft garden dirt and fell her head would have bounced off brick walkway.
I have since put up two more cameras to cover the doors of my home as I also had footage of her walking around our backyard when we
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but it seems a bit extreme to suggest that 24/7 citizen-enabled corporate surveillance is a good thing because a dumb teenager did a dumb teenager thing and his parents didn't want to take responsibility towards a neighbor they probably didn't like in the first place.
I didn't say it was a good thing, I said the bargain worked out in my favor due to the society we live in today. One where some people go through life with an attitude that it's somehow your problem that your car, parked in your own driveway, is in their kid's way, because somehow the entire width of the two-lane street separating the houses wasn't enough space.
As to having "relationships" with neighbors, I prefer not to have any. I keep my yard tidy, I don't post political signs in my lawn, and never bla
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So you're in favor of sharing your video footage with people who shouldn't have it without permission because you can also use your Ring camera like a normal security camera that doesn't share your video footage who shouldn't have it without permission?
That's your argument?
This is how fucked we are. 15 years of tech literacy going down the drain so people like you can't even imagine a world in which technology exists without it being abusive, and it being abusive just being the price to pay for having it, w
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Ring cameras are cheap. Really cheap. And as crazy as it sounds, even though I could probably throw something together using a Raspberry Pi and some parts from Skycraft, there's a few problems with that approach:
I'm not really that interested in security cameras, so I'd probably never have gotten around to completing the project.
I don't have the necessary tools to have the finished product not look like a prop from a sci-fi flick.
It would've probably ended up costing a lot more.
About the only thing in a s
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So no, I won't be smashing my Ring camera. We need these things because some people no longer do the right thing even when you've got them on video. I used to wonder why almost everyone in Russia seemed to have a dashcam - now I completely understand why.
I think you misunderstood the issue. The problem isn't the camera or the footage it captures. The problem is access it provides to 3rd parties.
At basic level:
1. Other parties make money off of your investment and you get nothing in return.( unless your argue it brings neighborhood security)
2. You haven't consented to yourself & your family to be under surveillance and I suppose Law Enforcement no longer needs a warrant to watch your/s movements.
3. Not that I have heard about this, but hypothetically if
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Amazon Ring... (Score:2)
Amazon Ring, flocked up, a new ring of "truthiness." Then in a year, it will be announced they did a deal with some other surveillance company, ring around the rosie.
--JoshK.
Should be illegal... (Score:5, Insightful)
Ring cameras in the US are apparently usually mounted so that they film your entryway, behind that the public sidewalk and street, and across from that your neighbor's house. To me - in Europe - that seems insane. Here, it is generally illegal to film public areas, because people have a right to move through the world without being tracked. And it is hugely illegal to film other people's property, because - well, that ought to be obvious - it's their property and not yours.
And yet here we have a business that not only lets you record all of that, but actively hands it out to anyone who wants it, for any reason whatsoever.
I have nothing against cameras filming what's happening on your own property, but Ring has normalized surveilling your neighbors.
Re:Should be illegal... (Score:5, Interesting)
> Here, it is generally illegal to film public areas, because people have a right to move through the world without being tracked.
Where exactly is "here"? CCTV coverage in Europe seems pretty pervasive, from what I've seen. All sorts of tracking, people and ANPR, presumably by the government.
Re: Should be illegal... (Score:1)
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Re: Should be illegal... (Score:2)
Re:Should be illegal... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Should be illegal... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ring cameras in the US are apparently usually mounted so that they film your entryway, behind that the public sidewalk and street, and across from that your neighbor's house.
For doorbell cameras to be useful, they have to be pointing in the direction from which people will enter, so that the person is walking towards the camera and facing the camera, i.e. the camera *must* be pointing in a line parallel to the direction of travel. That almost always means pointing out towards the public sidewalk and street unless your house has an unusual entryway design.
With side-mounted cameras, even if you know who a person is, you'll never get a shot that's clear enough to identify them, because they usually pass through the limited field of view too quickly.
And if there's a burglar, a sideways camera would be useless no matter what, because they could just approach from the side, then slip something over the camera, spray-paint it, or rip it off the wall before their faces become visible on camera. If it is possible to approach a camera without being seen, then it has absolutely no value whatsoever as a security camera.
Heck, you can't even reliably determine whether someone has left a package on your porch with a sideways-mounted camera, because the package usually won't be in view of the camera at any point in time.
In other words, Ring cameras are being installed correctly in the U.S., and if they're not installing them in that way in Europe, they might as well not bother installing them at all.
For context, I have one porch where pointing sideways is unavoidable because the steps go to the left and right from the door. The only reason I have a camera at that door is because I can talk to the camera over a web API and find out when someone rings the doorbell. That plus a power supply right inside the door made it possible to not cut into multiple walls to run doorbell wiring to that door from the opposite side of the house. But the camera itself? It's completely and totally useless. I have a separate camera mounted high up on the side of the house at ninety degrees, because that's the only way to get a useful view of the porch.
To me - in Europe - that seems insane. Here, it is generally illegal to film public areas, because people have a right to move through the world without being tracked
No, it most certainly isn't illegal, and anyone who is into photography has a responsibility to know the laws, so when I see comments like that, it raises alarm bells and I go digging to make sure nothing has changed. It hasn't.
In some countries, it's illegal to take a close-up of a specific person without their permission (portraits), but tourists walking around the streets of Paris or Prague take photographs and videos of public areas all the time, and if you tried to prevent that, you'd have to arrest tens of thousands of people every day.
There are laws limiting what government can do, and there are laws limiting how individuals can *use* that footage (e.g. if you're using it as part of a commercial movie, you'd better have a model release), but to the best of my knowledge, merely capturing the footage is presumptively legal in Europe unless you are shooting footage in the other direction, with a camera in a public place that is taking pictures of people in a private place (e.g. capturing angles that show people inside your neighbor's house).
Now Ring storing that footage on a commercial server is potentially more problematic, because they have to comply with the GDPR. But for you as an individual, capturing footage for personal use is presumptively legal under the GDPR, or at least that is my understanding of the law.
ring not flocked (Score:2)
That didn't take long (Score:2)
You are in a database the cops use (Score:3, Interesting)
In order for that database to really work it needs a lot of data sources that it can combine together which is why companies like ring and flock were working together.
It's crazy how America is doing all the fascist and dictatorship bullshit that China is doing but it's being done by private companies so everybody's like whatever it's fine. Americans don't care if there's a boot on our necks as long as the boot is privately owned
Panopticon Residence 134 Maple Street (Score:2)
You have allowed insect carcases to interfere with camera access.
Clean your camera NOW!
very difficult to prevent (Score:2)
The typical home surveillance system gives high resolution full coverage of your property but frequently also includes nearby street traffic and the activity at all of the surrounding residences. You can stream the video to a cloud system and potentially share it however you want. Here's one company that ties it all together conveniently for you but there are several others such as Videoloft and Camcloud;
https://www.een.com/ [een.com]
"Capture video and extract AI-driven analytics from virtually any ONVIF-conformant s