Amazon-owned Ring is abruptly ending its planned integration with Flock Safety, a fast-growing surveillance company whose AI-powered cameras feed data to police and federal agencies across the United States.

The partnership, announced only months ago, would have allowed Ring doorbell owners to send their home video directly into Flock’s investigative pipeline. Flock operates tens of thousands of license plate readers and video devices, building searchable archives that have been tapped by agencies including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Secret Service, and branches of the military. Flock insists it does not “work with ICE” as a client, but records show its systems have nonetheless been used in federal investigations.

In a brief blog post, Ring said the companies had made a “joint decision” to walk away, citing the unexpected time and resources the integration would require. The statement avoided any mention of civil liberties concerns, even as public scrutiny of both firms’ technologies has intensified.

The reversal lands just as Ring is promoting its own AI capabilities. A recent national ad showcased “Search Party,” a feature that imagines neighbors pooling camera feeds to locate a missing dog. Critics quickly pointed out that the same tools could be used to track people, not pets, raising alarms about neighborhood watch systems turning into de facto dragnet surveillance.

Ring has stressed that its AI “is not capable of processing human biometrics.” Yet the company already offers “Familiar Faces,” a facial recognition tool that lets users label frequent visitors so that alerts can say “Mom at Front Door” instead of a generic notification. Meanwhile, Flock’s software allows police to run natural-language searches across video archives to find individuals matching detailed descriptions, a practice researchers warn can amplify racial profiling and biased policing.

Privacy advocates argue that these consumer-friendly features are normalizing powerful surveillance infrastructures at a moment when the United States is grappling with the consequences of mass data collection. ICE and other agencies have leaned on facial recognition providers such as Clearview AI to identify and track people, often without their knowledge or consent.

Even without Flock, Ring maintains pathways for law enforcement access. The company already works with Axon, a major supplier of police body cameras and evidence management systems, and allows users to share footage directly with investigators.

Ring’s own security record remains under a cloud. The Federal Trade Commission ordered the company to pay millions after finding that employees and contractors had broad, inappropriate access to customers’ videos for years, underscoring the risks of concentrating intimate home footage in corporate hands.