Amazon’s Ring on Thursday announced it had decided to cancel the Flock Safety partnership announced in October 2025. In a press release, Ring said that, “following a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated.”
While the company cited the “time and resources” needed to deploy Flock Safety features, the announcement comes right after the backlash Ring received after airing a Super Bowl ad, which prompted privacy concerns from users. After the Super Bowl commercial aired, some of the existing Ring customers initiated return processes and were able to obtain refunds from Amazon for their Ring products, claiming Ring had changed the terms of service by partnering with Flock Safety.
The Super Bowl ad showed a Ring feature that seems innocent at first. Ring cameras can use AI to help a community find lost dogs. In the ad, Ring said the Search Party feature was free to everyone right now, without indicating whether opting out was possible. The company also noted in the ad that more than a dog a day was found since the feature was enabled. Some of the Ring users who advocated returning Ring home security hardware claimed on Reddit that Ring footage may ultimately reach ICE via the Flock Safety partnership. Ring’s press release addresses those concerns. Even though the Flock partnership was announced months ago, Ring made it clear in its press release that the integration “never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”
Ring’s Community Requests feature stays
Ring also said that the Community Requests feature remains “a core feature of Ring’s mission.” Community Requests allows Ring users to share specific footage with law enforcement in response to active investigations. Participation is voluntary, the press release notes, and owners can choose to ignore any requests coming their way. “You have complete control over whether to respond to a Community Request and what you share. Every Community Request is publicly posted and searchable for complete transparency and auditability,” Ring said.
The company offered a recent example of the program working as intended. Following the shooting at Brown University in December 2025, seven Ring owners provided 168 videos to the Providence Police Department in response to a request. The video shared with the police “captured critical moments from the incident,” according to Ring, including the discovery of a key witness.
The Community Requests program is the successor to a different, somewhat controversial feature. As The Verge reports, Community Requests was launched last September following a previous Ring partnership with law enforcement, the Request for Assistance program. Under that initiative, which ended in January 2024, Ring offered police access to Ring footage without a warrant. “This is a victory in a long fight, not just against blanket police surveillance, but also against a culture in which private, for-profit companies build special tools to allow law enforcement to more easily access companies’ users and their data—all of which ultimately undermine their customers’ trust,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) wrote at the time. The advocacy group was one of the organizations criticizing Ring’s program.
How to disable the Search Party feature
Trusting Ring may be difficult for some customers, but the company is taking action after the backlash. Ring cameras can continue to secure homes, with the right settings in place to address any privacy concerns.
Users who have not yet returned their Ring doorbells and security cameras may want to use them now that the Flock Safety partnership is canceled. If they worry about their privacy following the Search Party Super Bowl ad, they should know the feature can be disabled for every camera they own. According to Engadget, you can go to the Ring app, tap the menu in the top-left corner, and look for the Search Party feature in the Control Center and disable the Search for Lost Pets toggle. Optionally, you can turn off Natural Hazards monitoring from the same menu. Ring also has a detailed support document that details the feature, confirming users can turn it on and off at will.
