is a senior reviewer with over twenty years of experience. She covers smart home, IoT, and connected tech, and has written previously for Wirecutter, Wired, Dwell, BBC, and US News.
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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.
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.”
The statement goes on to say that Ring’s mission to make neighborhoods safer “comes with significant responsibility — to our customers, to the communities we serve, and to the trust you place in our products and features.”
Trust is the big one there. 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.
While that claim is not accurate, as the Flock integration has never gone live, Ring does have a history of partnering with police, and the company quickly came under intense criticism.
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