Amazon Ring’s Super Bowl ad sparks backlash amid fears of mass surveillance

Ring’s new Search Party feature has once again sparked backlash for the company. A 30-second ad that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl showed Ring cameras “monitoring” neighborhoods to locate a lost dog. In today’s political climate, a prime-time ad celebrating Neighborhood Watch struck a chord

People have expressed concerns on social media that the AI-based technology Ring uses to identify dogs could soon be used to search for humans. Combined with Ring’s rollout of its new facial recognition capability, this seems like a giant step for a pet search feature to be transformed into a state surveillance tool.

Privacy expert Chris Gilliard told 404 Media that the ad was “a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has close relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.”

The fears center around Amazon-owned Ring’s partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that has contracts with law enforcement to use its automated license plate readers and video surveillance systems.

The partnership connects Ring’s massive network of residential cameras to an organization that would have allowed ICE to access its data. own nationwide camera network.

“It’s definitely not about dogs, it’s about mass surveillance,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) posted on

Comments on the ad’s YouTube video ranged from “This is a huge problem disguised as a solution” to “A clever way to enlighten people in the context of mass surveillance.” Video: Ring

Ring spokesperson Emma Daniels said The edge that Search Party is designed to match images of dogs and is “not capable of processing human biometrics.” Additionally, she maintains that the facial recognition feature for familiar faces is separate from Search Party. It works at the individual account level, she said, and there’s no common sharing like there is with Search Party.

Although Familiar Faces is optional for each user, Search Party is enabled by default on any outdoor camera enrolled in Ring’s subscription plan. It works by using AI to scan images into the cloud for the missing dog once the owner uploads a photo to Ring’s Neighbors app. If a match is found, Ring alerts the camera owner, who can then choose to share the video or notify the owner through the app.

“These are not mass surveillance tools,” Daniels said. “We build the appropriate guardrails and we are extremely transparent about them.” While that may be the case today, I asked if Ring cameras could one day be used to specifically search for people. “The way these features are built, they’re not capable of that today,” she said. “We don’t comment on feature roadmaps, but I have no knowledge or indication that we are building features of this type at this point.”

Ring users can currently share footage from their cameras with local law enforcement during an active investigation through a feature called Community Requests. Unlike previous Ring police partnerships, Community Request goes through third-party companies – the Taser company Axon and, soon, Flock. “The reason we did this is because these third-party evidence management systems provide a much more secure chain of custody,” says Daniels, adding that if a user denies a request, no one will know about it.

The company maintains that neither the government nor law enforcement can access its network and that images are only shared by users or in response to a legal request. Daniels reiterated what the company previously said The edgethat it has no partnership with ICE or any other federal agency, and said you can see all requests made by agencies on its Neighbors app profile.

Additionally, the Flock integration is not currently active, although Daniels had no updates on the company’s partnership plans following the backlash. She referred me to the company’s earlier response. “As we explore integration, we will ensure that the functionality is designed for use only by local public safety agencies – which is what the program is designed to do.”

The problem is that nothing stops local agencies from sharing images with federal agencies. And even though the Super Bowl commercial showed heartwarming images of a girl reunited with her puppy, the step toward technology being able to track people in your neighborhood is still very small. Combined with government overreach, it’s not hard to imagine how a powerful network of AI-enabled cameras goes from finding lost dogs to hunting humans.

And Ring has a history of partnering with police. Although it has reduced some of this trend in recent years, since the return of founder Jamie Siminoff, the company has once again focused on using its products to prevent crime.

Siminoff said he returned because of the possibilities offered by AI. With this technology, he believes neighborhood cameras could be used to virtually “eliminate crime” within a year. Given these stated goals and the new capabilities that AI can bring, why wouldn’t Ring consider adding some form of paging to its cameras?

Eliminating crime is an admirable goal, but history has shown that tools capable of large-scale surveillance are rarely limited to their original purpose. Ring has a responsibility here to protect its users, which it claims to do. But ultimately, it all comes down to how much you can trust a company – and the business it supports – to never overdo it. If Ring hides its ambitions behind our instinct to protect our four-legged friends, that trust will be hard to find.