The Amazon-owned Ring home security company created a Super Bowl commercial around the tale of a lost dog being reunited with his family through information harvested from a web of doorbell cameras.

Days later, after critics warned that the commercial felt more invasive than heartwarming, Ring said it was ending a recent partnership with a surveillance technology firm.

Ring announced Thursday that it would no longer work with the firm, Flock Safety, which deploys camera systems and license-plate readers for use by law enforcement.

The two companies planned to link their technologies to power a feature called “Community Requests,” which would allow homeowners to decide whether to share footage from their Ring cameras with local police during investigations.

“We remain focused on building tools that empower neighbors to help one another while maintaining strong privacy protections and transparency about how our features work,” Ring said in a statement on its website.

The 30-second commercial showed a lost dog being traced from porch to porch through interconnected devices relying on what the company called “Search Party,” which used images from other cameras in the neighborhood to look for the missing pet.

By the end of the commercial, someone finds and returns the dog, a yellow lab named Milo, to its family.

On social media, some users expressed unease that the new feature presented as a technological advance appeared capable of enabling authorities to tap into thousands of cameras that could track people’s everyday movements.

Even before the Super Bowl ad, privacy advocates had raised alarms about the technology, saying that the companies’ collaboration risked tightening a bond between a homeowner security tool and police surveillance.

Ring did not cite the backlash as the reason for the split. Its statement said only that the joint venture would need “significantly more time and resources than anticipated.”

The decision ended the deal, which was announced in October between Ring and Flock Safety, whose surveillance technology is used by police departments across the country.

Ring said the “integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.”

In a statement, Flock Safety said the parting was a mutual decision that would allow both companies to better serve their customers and communities.

“Flock remains dedicated to supporting law enforcement agencies with tools that are fully configurable to local laws and policies, and we continue to engage directly with public officials and community leaders,” Flock Safety said.

Part of the concern about the integration of the Ring and Flock Safety functions was how far the technology could go in gathering and storing information about individuals.

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., on Wednesday wrote to Amazon’s CEO, Andrew Jassy, calling for the company to stop using facial recognition technology with its products.

For years, Markey has been critical of Ring’s data privacy practices and its relationship with law enforcement.

In a statement Friday, he called the end of the partnership “an important step in guarding against the ever-expanding network of surveillance technologies in this country.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Mark Walker/ Jefferson Siege
c.2026 The New York Times Company