Posted on 02/09/2026 2:26:37 PM PST by yesthatjallen
A 30-second ad from Ring stood out among Sunday’s glut of Super Bowl commercials shilling myriad forms of artificial intelligence, serving as a frightening reminder of how ubiquitous surveillance cameras have become amid our diminishing privacy. After all, if the “Search Party” function built into the doorbell camera’s app can be used to find a lost dog, as Sunday night’s ad emphasized, there’s little to stop it from being used to track people. The doorbell camera’s feature is especially worrisome now as the government encroaches on our civil liberties.
Pointing out the potential of the Amazon-owned Ring being used to squash dissent may sound alarmist considering the hopeful and upbeat tone of Ring’s ad, which pitches the tool as an update to the missing dog posters a family might hang around their neighborhood. As Ring founder Jamie Siminoff tells viewers in the ad, “One post of a dog’s photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match,” using artificial intelligence “to help families find lost dogs.” Walking down a bucolic street with what looks like a Belgian Malinois, Siminoff implores potential users to “be a hero in your neighborhood.”
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It’s only a matter of time before somebody’s home vids are demanded by a judge. Whether or not an actual seizure takes place has yet to be determined.
The surveillance levels have been very high in better neighborhoods for quite some time. It has become more affordable and simpler to operate a “Smart,Home” compared to a few years ago. True. There are pros and cons.
I dont want a smart home. But home surviellance via doorbell or other yard camera’s is nice for many things, like when you are away on vacation to see who is approaching your home.
My ring camera has gotten smarter lately. It used to tell me there was motion in my back yard when I let the dog out. Now it tells me there is a beige dog on the patio in the back yard. When it can tell me if he is humping the neighbors leg, then I guess I will have seen everything (except an ant eat its own head).
In my neck of the woods we need an app that the dogs use to let us know when their worthless owners drop them off in the country. The app would send out a picture of the POS so they can be found, fined, and flogged!
My only problem with the Ring, is that it’s right there in plain sight. So if a perpetrator comes to your front deck to commit a crime why wouldn’t he take the ring camera too?
“...worthless owners drop them off in the country. “
exPBRrat wrote: “My only problem with the Ring, is that it’s right there in plain sight. So if a perpetrator comes to your front deck to commit a crime why wouldn’t he take the ring camera too?”
That accomplished very little since the video the camera captures is stored off site. Take the camera and the video remains.
ComputerGuy wrote: “It’s only a matter of time before somebody’s home vids are demanded by a judge. Whether or not an actual seizure takes place has yet to be determined.”
Even sooner, your neighbor will sue because your camera is violating his right to privacy since your camera can capture his picture on his property.
They will hand over your recordings to law enforcement without warrants, cops only have to put in a request.
No thanky.
It’s easy to disable. Took all of two minutes.
My videos are uploaded to the cloud.
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