Amazon ends Flock partnership after backlash over Super Bowl ad

Amazon's Ring unit has ended its deal with security technology company 
Flock Safety after backlash over a Super Bowl commercial for the retail 
giant's smart doorbell sparked concerns about unwanted surveillance.

The Ring Super Bowl ad portrayed a family's search for their lost dog, 
with the manufacturer's internet-enabled doorbell coming to the rescue 
by showing additional smart doorbells around the neighborhood scanning 
for the pet and using AI to identify the lost animal.

The service, called "Search Party," wasn't related to Flock, but Amazon 
last year said it planned to work with the company to give Ring owners 
the option of sharing video with law enforcement through Ring's 
"Community Requests" service.

Surveillance "nightmare"?
While Search Party was framed in the Super Bowl ad as a helpful option 
for Ring doorbell owners, the spot sparked concerns from some critics 
that the tech could be used for nefarious purposes. The Electronic 
Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on civil liberties related 
to digital technology, declared that "no one ... will be safer in Ring's 
surveillance nightmare."

"[T]he company previewed future surveillance of our streets: a world 
where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices 
to identify, track and locate anything — human, pet, and otherwise," the 
group said in a Feb. 10 blog post.

In a statement on Thursday, Ring said that it opted to end the 
partnership because integrating Flock's technology "would require 
significantly more time and resources than anticipated." The statement 
didn't mention the Super Bowl commercial or cite it as a reason for 
ending the agreement.

Amazon also said the integration between Ring and Flock was never 
completed, noting that "no videos were ever shared between these services."

Flock confirmed that it never received any videos from Ring customers. 
Company founder Jamie Siminoff told CBS News on Thursday that the 
company protects privacy.

"The backlash has been a little bit around this concept of, 'Is this 
surveillance?'" he said. "It's actually not. It's allowing your camera 
to be an intelligent assistant for you and then allowing you to be a 
great neighbor."

When asked by CBS News chief correspondent Matt Gutman if there's an 
inherent tension between the public's desire for privacy and law 
enforcement's desire to crack a case, Siminoff responded: "I think you 
can have both," adding: "We built the system based on our customers 
asking us. They want to help out."

Beryl Lipton, a senior investigative researcher at the Electronic 
Frontier Foundation, told CBS News: "There is still a strong, reasonable 
expectation of privacy that people have a sense of, even if it is not 
strongly protected by the legal system at the moment."

Smart doorbells in the spotlight
The focus on Ring comes amid another high-profile use of a smart 
doorbell, with investigators in recent days saying they had recovered 
footage from a Google Nest camera outside the Arizona home of Nancy 
Guthrie — the missing mother of "Today" co-host Savannah Guthrie.

Investigators said they were able to extract "residual data" from the 
Google equipment, raising questions about how it was possible to retain 
the video. Officials had said the doorbell was disconnected, with no 
active subscription for storing video.

In its Thursday statement, Ring said its Community Requests feature 
remains "core" to its mission. The service is optional and voluntary, it 
added.

Community Requests was also used during the Brown University shooting in 
December, when the Providence Police Department used the service to ask 
for video footage, Ring noted.

"Within hours, seven neighbors responded, sharing 168 videos that 
captured critical moments from the incident," Ring said. "One video 
identified a new key witness, helping lead police to identify the 
suspect's vehicle and solve the case."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/amazon-flock-partnership-ending-superbowl-ad-backlash/