Analyzing claim ICE can use Ring doorbells as mass surveillance tools

As public criticism of U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s tactics intensified in January 2026 during an immigration crackdown in Minneapolis that led to the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents, some social media users spread warnings about ICE potentially accessing Ring doorbell cameras — to use them as surveillance tools — via the security technology company Flock. 

For example, one Reddit thread (archived) read: “Ring has partnered with Flock. ICE has access to Flock. If you still have a Ring camera – get rid of it.” The thread included an image of a poster of a Ring camera that said, “ICE thanks YOU for YOUR cooperation.”

Users shared (archived) similar claims on TikTok (archived), Bluesky (archived), LinkedIn (archived), Threads (archived) and Reddit (archived).

According to the two companies, the partnership referenced on social media does not allow ICE agents to access Ring users’ footage via Flock. A Flock news release described the partnership as a way for law enforcement officers using Flock to ask a community to voluntarily send Ring footage to help with investigations. A spokesperson for Amazon, Ring’s parent company, confirmed that the integration between Ring and Flock was not live as of late January 2026, meaning that Flock did not yet have access to customers’ Ring footage.

“Ring has no partnership with ICE, does not give ICE videos, feeds, or back-end access, and does not share video with them,” Sam McGee, the Amazon spokesperson, told Snopes in an email. McGee added that the company is working on ensuring that its integration with Flock is built for the use of local public safety agencies only.

Tech companies often have checkered histories with the management of user data. Because we cannot definitively rule out that ICE doesn’t have and will never have some way to access the doorbell footage of Ring customers, Snopes is not giving this claim a rating.

The Ring-Flock partnership

In October 2025, Ring and Flock announced a partnership to integrate the community requests feature of Ring’s Neighbors app with Flock’s systems used by law enforcement for investigations.

Ring’s smart doorbells allow people to see and talk to people at their front door through their phones. Its Neighbors app — which is separate from its standard doorbell app and is available to both Ring customers and non-customers — allows users to send and receive safety alerts about where they live. The app has a voluntary “community requests” feature that allows local law enforcement to send users in a certain area a request for Ring video footage from a specific time for an investigation.

Law enforcement doesn’t know who declines or ignores a request, Ring said in its announcement.

Flock Safety is known for its automated license plate recognition and video surveillance products primarily built for use by law enforcement. Flock also offers software, such as Flock Nova and FlockOS, that allows agencies to search and organize data for investigations. Through Flock’s software platforms, law enforcement officers can compile data such as license plates, photos and last known location of a suspect, and can make requests to other law enforcement agencies for whatever information they may have.

The partnership, according to the companies’ announcements, allows law enforcement officers to use Flock’s systems to send community requests through the Neighbors app. If someone responds, the agency making the request will receive the footage directly through Flock’s system. When the companies announced the partnership, they said the rollout of the integration would happen “in the coming months.”

Flock is not the first company of its kind to partner with Ring for community requests. In April 2025, Ring announced it planned on introducing community requests in partnership with Axon, which offers law enforcement data collection and evidence management systems similar to Flock’s. 

The Amazon spokesperson told Snopes that Ring has required local public safety agencies to include in their requests a specific location and timeframe of the incident, a unique investigation code and details about what is being investigated since the program’s September 2025 launch. All of an agency’s community requests are visible on its Neighbors app profile. People using the app can turn off community requests notifications and personal feed visibility if they wish, according to Ring.

Flock’s history with ICE

Neither Flock nor Ring has an on-the-record partnership with ICE. Flock said in a blog post in January 2026 that it “does not have a contract with with ICE or any sub-agency of the Department of Homeland Security” and it “does not share customer data with any entity, federal or otherwise, without their permission, and does not grant access to customer data without a customer’s explicit choice and control.”

At the same time, Flock says the data in its systems is owned by its customers, who can do with that data whatever they’d like. Some of Flock’s customers have reportedly shared this data with ICE.

“Any access to Flock by a federal agency, if it occurs at all, must be explicitly granted by a local customer and must comply with applicable law,” Flock wrote in its blog post. “Flock’s role is not to encourage or discourage collaboration with any federal entity.”

Flock allows customers to opt-in to a national data-sharing network between local police departments. Since its inception, any agency that has wanted to use the nationwide data search has also had to agree to share its own data to the network. According to Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, Flock informed his office in August 2025 that 75% of its law enforcement customers have this network enabled.

In May 2025, 404Media, a technology-focused news site, reported that ICE was searching Flock’s network through agreements and favors with local police departments, with those departments making searches on behalf of ICE or giving ICE agents access to accounts they could use to make the searches.

Later in 2025, local media outlets and other organizations reported that Flock audit logs showed that data from local police departments was included in immigration-related searches by other police departments on Flock. These searches included data from police departments that hadn’t agreed to share their data with ICE.

This prompted some communities to cancel or suspend their contracts with Flock, turn off Flock’s cameras or stop their participation in the national data-sharing network. For its part, Flock has introduced keyword filters meant to block searches in communities where local laws prohibit law enforcement agencies from sharing information for specific types of investigations, such as those involving abortion or immigration.

Ring’s policies and history

McGee, the Amazon spokesperson, told Snopes over email that ICE can’t make requests for videos through the community requests feature: “This feature is designed for local public safety agencies only. No videos are shared with local public safety agencies through Community Requests unless a customer explicitly chooses to do so.”

According to Ring’s law enforcement guidelines page, Ring “may produce” video from customers’ devices for law enforcement “in response to valid and binding search warrants.” Ring notifies users when it shares their footage with law enforcement unless it is prohibited from doing so, according to the company’s privacy page.

That privacy page noted that “on rare occasions Ring will provide information to law enforcement on an emergency basis when there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.” These emergency requests could be a means for Ring to send law enforcement user video without first requiring a warrant.

Ring’s law enforcement guidelines page noted that Ring has access only to videos belonging to users with an active subscription at the time of the recorded incident. Ring said subscribers are able to set how long the recordings on their device are saved and that Ring retains those recordings for however long the customer sets. Ring does not record or store a customer’s video without a subscription, according to its privacy policy.

That means that so long as Ring follows its company policy, ICE would not have access to doorbell video recordings from a Ring customer without a subscription simply because those recordings would not exist.

Ring doesn’t have a spotless history with customer data. In 2024, it settled with the Federal Trade Commission “over charges the company allowed employees and contractors to access consumers’ private videos” and failed to secure customer data to prevent hackers from accessing them.