When Ring’s latest commercial came on over a Super Bowl ad break, it offered a service that seems like a no-brainer. Called “Search Party,” it’s a new function that lets Ring devices help canvas the neighborhood through its vast network of cameras to find lost pets.
“One post of a dog’s photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match to help families find lost dogs,” the company’s Super Bowl ad enthuses.
Yet beneath all that is a startling revelation: that Ring doorbells can now surveil living beings throughout every neighborhood the devices might be found.
For those unfamiliar, Ring is Amazon’s doorbell camera company — those ubiquitous gadgets mounted on front porches that record everyone who walks by.
The devices have been the target of widespread privacy criticisms for years at this point. However, their latest data sharing agreement with surveillance company Flock has many activists up in arms, as that startup has no qualms with working closely with federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
With those kind of optics swirling around, the decision to highlight new dog-finding capabilities is a clever PR move for Ring. Who would say no to reuniting lost puppies with their families?
At the same time, the new Search Party function represents a troubling development. Where the company’s Fire Watch system is said to index neighborhood devices to watch for signs of fire emergencies, the Search Party function means the company is capable of tracking living things as well. Who decides when and how to deploy that power is another story — but it’s obvious that Ring has opened Pandora’s box.
As MS Now columnist Hayes Brown observed: “there’s no world in which finding lost dogs is the final end-use for this technology.”
“Ring’s Search Party feature does what neighbors have done for generations — help reunite lost dogs with their families — just with better technology,” a Ring spokesperson told us in a statement. “We built the feature with strong privacy protections from the start and camera owners choose on a case-by-case basis whether they want to share videos with a pet owner to support a reunion. Since launch, Search Party has helped bring home more than a dog a day.”
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