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<title>With Ring, American Consumers Built a Surveillance Dragnet</title>
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style="color: transparent; display: none; height: 0; max-height: 0; max-width: 0; opacity: 0; overflow: hidden; mso-hide: all; visibility: hidden; width: 0;">Ring's
'Search Party' is dystopian surveillance accelerationism.</span>
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Ring, American Consumers Built
a Surveillance Dragnet</a> </td>
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valign="top" align="center"> By
Jason Koebler \u2022 <span
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Feb 2026 </span> </td>
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<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"><i><em
class="italic"
style="white-space: pre-wrap;">Hey </em></i><i><em
class="italic">there</em></i><i><em
class="italic"
style="white-space: pre-wrap;">,</em></i></p>
<p dir="ltr"
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"><i><em
class="italic"
style="white-space: pre-wrap;">At our old jobs, we used to write and edit stories about Ring all the time. Ring has flown under the radar the last few years, but it's clear we need to start doing that again. If you're researching Ring or know anything we should know, please get in touch by responding to this email or messaging me on Signal @jason.404.</em></i></p>
<p dir="ltr"
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"><i><em
class="italic"
style="white-space: pre-wrap;">-Jason</em></i></p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">America,
it\u2019s time to refamiliarize yourself
with Ring. </p>
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<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">At
Sunday\u2019s Super Bowl, Ring advertised
\u201cSearch Party,\u201d a cute, horrifyingly
dystopian feature nominally designed
to turn all of the Ring cameras in a
neighborhood into a dragnet that uses
AI to look for a lost dog: \u201cOne post
of a dog\u2019s photo in the Ring app
starts outdoor cameras looking for a
match,\u201d Ring founder Jamie Siminoff
said in the Super Bowl commercial.
\u201cSearch Party from Ring uses AI to
help families find lost dogs.\u201d
Onscreen, an AI-powered box forms
around a missing dog: \u201cMilo Match,\u201d it
says. \u201cSince launch, more than a dog a
day has been reunited with their
family. Be a hero in your neighborhood
with Search Party. Available to
everyone for free right now.\u201d</p>
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<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; margin-top: 1.5em; color: #15212A;">It
does not take an imagination of any
sort to envision this being tweaked to
work against suspected criminals,
undocumented immigrants, or others
deemed \u2018suspicious\u2019 by people in the
neighborhood. Many of these use cases
are how Ring has been used by people
on its <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/3893224d?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>dystopian
\u201cNeighbors\u201d app for years</u></a>.
Ring rose to prominence as a piece of
package theft prevention tech owned by
Amazon and by forming partnerships
with local police around the country,
<a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/39c71259?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>asking
them to shill their doorbell
cameras</u></a> to people in their
neighborhoods in return for a system
that allowed police to request footage
from individual users without a
warrant. </p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">Chris
Gilliard, <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/18d19696?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>a privacy
expert</u></a> and author of the
upcoming book <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/d220b02f?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><em><u>Luxury
Surveillance</u></em></a>, told
404 Media these features and its Super
Bowl ad are \u201ca 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 and other equally invasive
surveillance companies.\u201d</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">Unlike,
say, data analytics giant Palantir or
some other high-profile surveillance
companies, Ring is a surveillance
network that homeowners have by and
large deployed themselves, powered by
fear mongering against our neighbors
and unfettered consumerism.</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">After a
lot of criticism in the late 2010s
over its police contracts and its
terrible security settings that
resulted in hackers breaking into a
series of indoor Ring cameras to <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/d08f063d?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>terrorize
children and families</u></a>,
Ring somehow found a way to more or
less fly under the radar the last few
years as a critical part of our
ever-expanding surveillance state. It
<a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/d1681042?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>did this
by scaling back police
partnerships</u></a> that were so
critical to its growth but that
received lots of scrutiny from
journalists and privacy advocates. <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/25fd4309?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>Siminoff
left Ring in 2023</u></a>, but
returned last year; in his absence,
Ring explicitly sought to take on a
softer tone by branding itself as more
or less as a device that could be used
to film viral moments on people\u2019s
porches. It turned its owners into
mini cops who would complain about
delivery people who didn\u2019t drop a
package in the correct spot; who
became hyperaware of the comings and
goings of their friends, spouses, and
children, or who might catch a
potentially sharable moment when
someone slipped on an icy porch or
whatever. Part of this strategy
included creating a short-lived
reality TV show called Ring Nation,
which consisted of precious little
moments filmed through Ring cameras.</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">When
Siminoff returned last year, he
immediately sought to re-establish
many of Ring\u2019s partnerships with
police, and set an <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/983f65d6?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>explicit
goal of injecting more AI</u></a>
into Ring cameras and trying to
\u201crevolutionize how we do our
neighborhood safety.\u201d </p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">\u201cRing
is rolling back many of the reforms
it\u2019s made in the last few years by
easing police access to footage from
millions of homes in the United
States. This is a grave threat to
civil liberties in the United States,\u201d
Matthew Guariglia of the Electronic
Frontier Foundation <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/1ab8e194?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>wrote
shortly after Siminoff\u2019s return</u></a>.
\u201cThis is most likely about Ring
cashing in on the rising tide of
techno-authoritarianism, that is,
authoritarianism aided by surveillance
tech. Too many tech companies want to
profit from our shrinking liberties.\u201d</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">Even in
Siminoff\u2019s absence, Ring had always,
explicitly been intended to assist law
enforcement. In a series of
investigations we did back at VICE, we
uncovered thousands of pages of
documents, emails, and chats via
public records requests and leaks that
highlighted Ring\u2019s surveillance
ambitions. The company <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/c035b47d?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>threw
parties</u></a> for police, <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/64fade72?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>employees
wore \u201cFUCK CRIME\u201d shirts to
internal parties</u></a>, and
helped police facilitate the retrieval
of footage from its customers\u2019 cameras
if they initially refused to
cooperate. It helped police set up
elaborate, <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/eaff7d68?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>completely
useless package \u201csting\u201d operations</u></a>
designed to catch criminals but that
did not result in any arrests. Ring
gave cops devices that they could
raffle off to people in their towns,
gave police \u201cheat maps\u201d of where its
customers lived, <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/139530dd?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>used its
social media accounts</u></a> to
post footage of supposed suspicious
people, and incentivized customers to
create \u201cDigital Neighborhood Watch\u201d
groups that <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/ddc4c6e3?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>could earn
them swag</u></a> if they used
their Ring cameras to report
suspicious activity to police. </p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">With
Ring\u2019s recent partnership with Flock,
which will further <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/944fe4c6?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>facilitate
the sharing of video footage</u></a>
with police, and its new Search Party
feature, the message is clear: Ring is
still, again, and always will be in
the business of leveraging its network
of luxury surveillance consumers as a
law enforcement tool. After years of
saying it wasn\u2019t doing facial
recognition and that it was focused
more on \u201cobject recognition,\u201d it has
now explicitly launched \u201cfriendly\u201d
versions of facial recognition and
facial recognition-adjacent
technologies: \u201cSearch Party\u201d is
essentially specific dog recognition
(for now), and <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/bfd20c0b?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>a beta
product called</u></a> \u201cFamiliar
Faces\u201d specifically identifies people
you know when they\u2019re at your door.
\u201cAlexa Guard identifies who\u2019s who,\u201d
the product\u2019s website reads. \u201cWith
Familiar Faces, easily tag your family
and friends in the Ring app so your 2k
and 4k cameras can notify you when
someone is spotted.\u201d</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">Ring
has always been a surveillance tool,
but adding AI analysis and networking
the devices together\u2014like is being
promised with Search Party\u2014turns
discrete pieces of tech into massive,
automated surveillance dragnets. </p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">\u201cSiminoff\u2019s
return was a hard pivot back to, in
his words, the \u2018crime fighting\u2019
element and away from the softer tone
they had tried to establish with Ring
as a fun way to interact with people
in your community,\u201d Gilliard said.
\u201cBut I think it\u2019s becoming very
obvious to people how these systems
are being deployed against their
neighbors in oppressive ways, and they
are beginning to reject them,
particularly since there is <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/56a66df4?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>no strong
evidence that they prevent crime</u></a>
or make people safer.\u201d</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;"><a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/02d4d8fc?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>The
YouTube comments</u></a> on Ring\u2019s
Super Bowl ad are almost uniformly
negative, with people noting \u201cthis is
like the commercial they show at the
beginning of a dystopian sci fi film
to quickly show people how bad things
have gotten,\u201d \u201care we really supposed
to believe that the main intent for
this is lost pets,\u201d and \u201cglad people
are freaking out. This is dystopia
becoming reality.\u201d</p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">Ring\u2019s
poorly defined partnership with Flock
in particular has been the subject of
various viral posts and public
backlash. Many people have suggested
that this partnership is evidence that
Ring camera footage will be shared
with ICE. At the moment there\u2019s not
enough evidence to explicitly say that
that\u2019s the case. </p>
<p
style="margin: 0 0 1.5em 0; line-height: 1.6em; color: #15212A;">The
supposed vector goes something like
this: Ring says it will partner with
Flock, which is used by thousands of
local police departments. As we have
reported, some of those police <a
href="https://www.404media.co/r/5d29b452?m=372477bb-ff40-45dd-bf2c-8da2c669ee83"
style="overflow-wrap: anywhere; color: #45B003; text-decoration: underline;"
target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true"><u>departments
have performed Flock license plate
lookups for ICE</u></a>. It\u2019s too
early to say whether Ring footage will
eventually end up with ICE, but the
fact that people immediately drew that
conclusion and understood the possible
method of information sharing shows
that surveillance companies can no
longer hide behind viral videos of
delivery drivers dancing. It\u2019s a mask
off moment, and people know it: \u201cIn
Amazon\u2019s alliance with this
administration, it\u2019s become more clear
than ever that Ring is an extension of
the carceral state,\u201d Gilliard said.
\u201cAn emotionally charged Super Bowl ad
won\u2019t change that.\u201d</p>
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