Ring to partner with Flock, giving law enforcement easier access to home security camera footage

Surveillance camera company Ring on Thursday announced it will begin sharing footage with Flock Safety, the manufacturer of automated license plate reader cameras and other police surveillance technologies.

Millions of Americans own Ring cameras, which typically capture footage outside of homes.

Under the new partnership, law enforcement agencies which use Flock Safety products can ask Ring owners to provide images for “evidence collection and investigative work,” according to a blog post on the Ring website.

Police officials using the Flock platform will be able to ask Ring owners for footage by listing the specific timeframe and location of the incident they are investigating and why they are investigating it. 

The Ring partnership applies to law enforcement agencies using Flock Nova and FlockOS products.

Flock Nova is a new offering which combines license plate recognition camera footage with information gleaned from data brokers and open source intelligence. 

Law enforcement using Flock products can pull license plate images and locations from a shared national database, which has alarmed privacy advocates and other critics who say the company facilitates the warrantless surveillance of hundreds of millions of individuals who have not committed crimes. Flock cameras are used in more than 6,000 communities nationwide.

Flock has come under fire in recent months following reports of immigration agencies using it to find undocumented people and police officers tracking a woman being investigated for self-administering an abortion.

In January 2024, Ring ended a similar program allowing law enforcement to access homeowner cameras after complaints by privacy advocates and some politicians. In April, Ring’s founder, Jamie Siminoff, returned to the company, promising to do more to assist police.

Ring, which is owned by Amazon, settled with the Federal Trade Commission after a 2023 complaint alleged it had allowed employees and contractors to access consumers’ private videos and failed to implement security safeguards.