Days after the Super Bowl announcement, Ring canceled the Herd partnership amid censorship concerns

Amazon’s doorbell and smart home device subsidiary, Ring, announced on Friday that it… The partnership was cancelled With the safety of the herd that I entered last yearAmid a backlash that came to a head after Ring’s Super Bowl ad On February 8th.

It was a commercial for the new Ring Party search feature Aiming to help homeowners find lost dogs. But instead of evoking warm feelings among pet owners, the ad succeeded in attracting attention Attention and scrutiny of Ring’s privacy practices, especially its partnerships with groups that work with law enforcement.

Flock Safety is an Atlanta-based manufacturer of hardware and software that includes license plate readers, drones, and video surveillance cameras. The company works with 5,000 law enforcement agencies, According to its website.

The cancellation of the partnership comes at a time when mass protests have erupted across the United States in response to oppressive and violent actions taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies, including in cities like Minneapolis.

flock He denies sharing data With ICE, Ring said it decided to stop the partnership before it began, stressing that it had never sent videos to Flock as part of its community request program. “After a comprehensive review, we determined that the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated,” the blog post says.

Public pressure was not mentioned as a factor, although it exists It was the reports Users disconnecting or destroying their Ring devices in response to the Super Bowl ad.

The closest the blog post comes to acknowledging the PR issue is the final line: “We will continue to carefully evaluate future partnerships to ensure they align with our standards for customer trust, safety, and privacy.”

Although the Flock partnership has ended, Amazon has also entered into an agreement Partnership with ExxonWhich manufactures stun devices and works with law enforcement agencies. It continues to provide Ring cloud videos to law enforcement upon request.

This week, Ring founder Jimmy Siminoff discussed Nancy Guthrie Kidnapping case with CBS News, saying that unlike competing Nest cameras, the company will not be able to recover deleted video from a Ring camera account.

But he added that the video NEST recovered was “amazing” and useful in a criminal investigation like this. Talk about community alerts, which law enforcement can issue through Ring’s network of doorbell camera owners.

In the interview, A Separate video An image captured by a Ring camera was shown five miles from Guthrie’s home in Tucson that may be linked to the kidnapping. Semenov did not comment on the video, but said the technology could be useful in linking information together in criminal investigations.

Police “need systems like ours, like community alerts, to be able to talk to neighbors and ask them,” Siminoff said. “And we need the neighbors to feel comfortable that their privacy is being protected, but they can also help get involved and hopefully that will once again lead to the suspect being found and Nancy being brought home.”

A Ring representative told CNET that there are no other changes to Ring’s community request program.