With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet
8 70Ring's Super Bowl ad on Sunday promoted "Search Party," a feature that lets a user post a photo of a missing dog in the Ring app and triggers outdoor Ring cameras across the neighborhood to use AI to scan for a match. 404 Media argues the cheerful premise obscures what the Amazon-owned company has become: a massive, consumer-deployed surveillance network.
Ring founder Jamie Siminoff, who left in 2023 and returned last year, has since moved to re-establish police partnerships and push more AI into Ring cameras. The company has also partnered with Flock, a surveillance firm used by thousands of police departments, and launched a beta feature called "Familiar Faces" that identifies known people at your door. Chris Gilliard, author of the upcoming book Luxury Surveillance, called the ad "a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement."
Further reading: No One, Including Our Furry Friends, Will Be Safer in Ring's Surveillance Nightmare, EFF Says
8 comments
"Search Party Deported Another Neighbor!" (Score: 5, Insightful)
by abulafia ( 7826 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @09:08PM (#65983792)
What a shitty place we're becoming.
Re: "Search Party Deported Another Neighbor!" (Score: 5, Informative)
by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @09:44PM (#65983854)
Back in the real world, cops have been asking for privately owned surveillance recordings to help with investigations since video recording became a thing. And the very reason people (usually businesses) have set up video surveillance was to deter crime and help track down crooks who were insufficiently deterred.
And they are welcome to continue to ask (I've actually given them video a couple of times), or they could even get a warrant, all without me becoming an involuntary instrument of questionable state surveillance. It actually works pretty well as it is IMO.
Like most dangerous things, it's the misuse... (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @09:40PM (#65983846)
I have a ring doorbell and cameras and they're game changers. IDK why you wouldn't want the police to have access. Are you going to self-investigate crimes?
...our concern is not when it's used correctly, but when it's misused....just like guns, drugs, motor-vehicles....when used responsibly?...fine...when a repeat offender drunk driver crashes in your car, a huge issue. Like guns and vehicles we need regulations.
Perhaps make it a crime to show footage from another person's property unless there is a warrant or reasonable suspicion of a crime committed?. So yeah, you catch someone stealing your neighbor's packages (I live in the city, so our front doors are less than 50 feet apart), you're a hero. You use it to show your neighbor her husband had a visitor when she's not in town?...you're human trash and should be charged with a misdemeanor and banned from using surveillance cameras in public for a year.
Re:"Search Party Deported Another Neighbor!" (Score: 5, Interesting)
by leonbev ( 111395 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @10:51PM (#65983942)
I'm sure that somewhere buried in the terms and conditions is a statement that allows Amazon AI to analyze your video footage for products that they can monetize.
That way, the next time you log into amazon.com, they can recommend winter floor mats for the 2018 Toyota RAV-4 they see in your driveway and flea and tick medication for the golden retriever that you take for walks every afternoon.
Oh, and if those flowers are looking a bit wilted come spring, maybe they should recommend some fertilizer as well.
A woman down the street got caught cheating by one (Score: 5, Insightful)
by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @09:32PM (#65983828)
Last year, a married couple down the street for me got divorced because their nosy neighbor across the street complained on nextdoor about some guy illegally parking, blocking a driveway...with ring camera photos. Well, the husband saw it, because it was his driveway being blocked (by about 6 inches), but the car belonged to her ex husband and he was out of town when it happened. So there's all sorts of shittiness going on in that instance and that couple was a piece of work...to put it nicely, but it illustrates something I've worried about for a long time.
I don't give a shit about the cops knowing things about me. I don't commit crimes. I sincerely believe Amazon that they made these ringcams to reduce package theft, a huge expense for them.
However, I FUCKING HATE that my lazy piece of shit neighbors have easy surveillance of EVERY visitor in my house...every moment my lights go on or off...they can not only see in every window in my house that faces theirs, but they can easily go back in time and see anything of interest, even when they're gone or asleep.
I live in the city, so my front door is 50 feet from the door across the street...GREAT view for a ringcam. An elderly neighbor with one likes to tattle on people in our neighborhood. She warned my next door neighbor that her husband was having a pretty girl visit late at night every night when he was out of town....offered to show her the ring footage. That pretty girl?...their fucking babysitter. He had to work late at night for a deadline and they had 2yo twins at the time
While shit like this isn't new, technology and now facial recognition is making it a lot easier for shitty morons like these neighbors to do things like this. I especially hate the facial recognition part. Before, you had to watch through footage. Now AI can give summaries of everywhere someone was. This WILL get leaked sooner or later. I hope you don't cheat...and equally importantly, I hope the data is accurate. What happens when some jealous husband knocks on your door demanding answers on why your wife was at your place...when she never was...but the ring cam thought your babysitter was someone else....or the coordinates or timestamp gets messed up. Or....the data gets leaked and now thieves in your neighborhood know your schedule!
We need stronger laws about surveillance.
Re:A woman down the street got caught cheating by (Score: 5, Insightful)
by lucifuge31337 ( 529072 ) on <`ten.tcepsortni' `ta' `lyrad'> on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @10:33PM (#65983930)
I don't give a shit about the cops knowing things about me. I don't commit crimes.
This is literally the kind of thinking that got us here, to the point of surveilance capitalism. Because credulous people like you thing that wanting privacy means someone is doing something nefarious. How's that worked out?
Re:UniFi (Score: 5, Insightful)
by SirSlud ( 67381 ) on Wednesday February 11, 2026 @11:14PM (#65983968)
Dude, the discussion is about a commodity product millions of people are buying and using that requires next to zero technical aptitude.
There's always a few adorable lunkheads who chime on these discussions about how responsible and well reasoned their decisions are, but for whatever reason they're unable to spot why that is fully orthogonal to the expressed concern. Unless you actually believe there is some reality in which the solution to the expressed concern is simply that if you just chime in enough, everyone is gunna just switch over to what they're doing?
Like in this case the problem of 10 million Ring Doorbell owners is that 10 million Ring Doorbell owners are just find out about UniFi, buy a NAS, and replace their doorbells with Ubiquiti doorbells or cameras? (At like, generously speaking, 10 times the cost. Have fun running that PoE, grandma!)
Honestly, I'm curious why you think your UniFi/NAS setup is germane to this discussion.
Re:UniFi (Score: 5, Informative)
by s0nicfreak ( 615390 ) on Thursday February 12, 2026 @12:05PM (#65985012)
I'm switching to Ubiquiti after learning it exists from a similar post on arstechnica. (In the long run it saves me money over Ring's monthly fee - not that that was a major reason to switch for me, I'm just pointing out that it is not 10 times the cost.) When people come to a discussion about why Ring is bad, it's valuable to let them know there are alternatives that don't have the bad things. Obviously everyone won't switch - not everyone comes to Slashdot and even here there are some people arguing that they don't see why this is an issue - but comments like what DrLudicrous said are helpful to people that want to.