Wyświetl ten post na Instagramie\n\n\nPolitical Concerns\nSen. Ed Markey called the ad “dystopian” and said it was proof Amazon, which owns Ring, needed to cease all facial recognition technology on Ring doorbells. He said, “This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.”\nAnd then, on Thursday, February 12th, just four days after the Super Bowl, Ring announced it was canceling its partnership with Flock, in a statement first reported by The Verge’s Jen Tuohy. That statement itself is a lot:\n
\nFollowing a comprehensive review, we determined the planned Flock Safety integration would require significantly more time and resources than anticipated. As a result, we have made the joint decision to cancel the planned integration. The integration never launched, so no Ring customer videos were ever sent to Flock Safety.\n\n\nRing’s Mission\nThe company also goes on to say that Ring cameras were used by police in identifying a school shooter at Brown University in December 2025. It’s an odd non sequitur in a press release about canceling a controversial partnership that really explains a lot about Ring, and how the company sees itself.\nAs it happens, Ring’s founder Jamie Siminoff was just on Dekoder a few months ago, talking about how and why he founded the company, and in detail about why he sees Ring’s mission as eliminating crime. Not selling cameras or doorbells, or floodlights, or anything else Ring makes, but getting rid of crime.\n\nAI and Surveillance\nWe actually talked about Search Party and how people might feel about that kind of surveillance, and how Ring works with the cops quite a bit. In fact, Jamie briefly left Ring in 2023, and the company slowed down on its work with law enforcement. But ever since he returned, the emphasis on crime and the work with police has only intensified. I asked him about it:\n
\nNILAY PATEL: You left, Amazon said we’re going to stop working with police, you came back, boy, Ring is going to work with police again. You have a partnership with Axon, which makes the taser, that allows law enforcement to get access to Ring footage. Did that feel like a two-way door? They made the wrong decision in your absence, and you came back and said, “We’re going to do this again”?\n\nJAMIE SIMINOFF: I don’t know if it’s wrong or right, but I think different leadership does different things. I do believe that I spent a lot of time going on ride-alongs. I spent a lot of time in areas that I’d say are not safe for those people, and I’ve seen a lot of things where I think we can positively impact them. So, we don’t work with police in the way of … I just want to be careful, as we’re not … What we do allow is for agencies to ask for footage when something happens. We allow our neighbors, which I’ll say in this point are our customers, just to be clear, we allow our customers to anonymously decide whether or not they want to partake in that.\n\nSo, if they decide they don’t want to be part of this network and don’t want to help this public service agency that asks them, they just say no. If they decide that they do want to, which, by the way, a lot of people want to increase the security of their neighborhoods. A lot of people want their kids to grow up in safer neighborhoods, a lot of people want to have the tools to do that, and are in places that are dangerous. We give them the ability to say yes and make it more efficient for them to communicate with those public service agencies, and also do it in a very auditable digital format.\n\nThat’s the other side. Today, without these tools, if a police officer wanted to go and get footage from something, they’d have to go and knock on the door and ask you, and that’s not comfortable for anyone. There’s no digital audit trail of it, and, with this, they can do it efficiently with an audit trail. It is very clear, and it’s anonymous.\n\n\nThe Role of AI\nJamie actually talked a lot about searching for dogs in this context, because one of the reasons he was so excited to come back to Ring was to use AI to search through the massive amounts of video generated by Ring cameras. In fact, he told me that Ring could not have built Search Party five years ago, because AI systems to do it weren’t available.\nJamie is nothing if not direct about this, which I appreciate. The man really thinks you can use AI and cameras to reduce or even eliminate crime. But I had a lot of questions about this:\n
\nJAIME SIMINOFF: But when you put AI into it, now, all of a sudden, you have this human element that AI gives you. I think, with our products in neighborhoods and, again, you have to be a little bit specific to it, I do see a path where we can actually start to take down crime in a neighborhood to call it close to zero. And I even said, there are some crimes that you can’t stop, of course.\n\nNILAY PATEL: Mechanically, walk people through what you mean. You put enough Ring products in a neighborhood, and then AI does what to them that helps you get closer to the mission of zeroing out crime?\n\nSo, the mental model, or how I look at it, is that AI allows us to have … If you had a neighborhood where you had unlimited resources, so every house had security guards and those security guards were people that worked the same house for 10 years or 20 years, and I mean that from a knowledge perspective. So, the knowledge they had of that house was extreme; they knew everything about you and that residence and your family, how you lived, the
W niedawnym artykule przyjrzeliśmy się firmie Ring zajmującej się kamerami, koncepcji zagubionych psów i rosnącemu państwu nadzoru. Wielu z was może pamiętać, że podczas ostatniego Super Bowl widzieliście reklamę, w której przewijały się te tematy.
Ring’s “Search Party” ad that aired during the Super Bowl ignited an immediate and intense controversy. When the same technology goes from finding lost dogs to locating strolling kids, there’s an undeniable potential for it to be used to invade our privacy – both by law enforcement and by everyday citizens. Ring has always been open about its collaboration with police departments, which inevitably raises serious questions about our civil liberties. This concern amplifies particularly in light of Ring’s announced partnership with a company called Flock Safety – a firm that has given access to ICE.
The data company PeakMetrics reported that the conversation around the ad peaked on social media two days after the Super Bowl, and the general sentiment was majorly negative. Needless to mention, the backlash was impactful when Matt Nelson, the well-known figure behind the ‘weratedogs’ account, started uploading critical videos concerning the ad.
Sen. Ed Markey addressed Ring’s Super Bowl ad as “dystopian” and emphasized that it was evidence of a need to cease all facial recognition technology on Ring doorbells. In his words, “This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.” Coincidentally, just four days post-Super Bowl, Ring announced the termination of its partnership with Flock Safety, a development first reported by Jen Tuohy at The Verge.
Firma uzupełniła swoje oświadczenie, powołując się na wykorzystanie kamer Ring przez policję w identyfikacji szkolnego strzelca na Uniwersytecie Browna w grudniu 2025 roku. Wzmianka ta wydawała się zaskakująco nie na miejscu, gdy skupiono się na wyjaśnieniu, dlaczego kontrowersyjna umowa została anulowana.
Ring’s mission, as described by its founder Jamie Siminoff during an episode of “Decoder” a few months back, is getting rid of crime altogether. He talked about Ring’s initial foundations and how the company perceives itself. Post his departure from the company in 2023, Ring slowed down its collaboration with law enforcement. However, the focus on tackling crime and working with police has only amplified following his return.
Siminoff was forthright and bold in explaining his idea of using AI and cameras to moderate or even completely abolish crime. Ring’s thrust on developing AI capabilities is noteworthy, too. Five years ago, for instance, the company wouldn’t have been able to develop ‘Search Party’, a feature powered by AI, due to the lack of relevant resources. Today, however, leveraging AI and machine learning to comb through the colossal amount of footage presented through Ring cameras isn’t just possible – it’s a reality.
To wrap up, the question that still remains is – is Ring, a camera company at its core, moving in the right direction by using AI and advanced surveillance systems to make our neighborhoods safer, or is it catalyzing an unwelcome surveillance society? This is a critical debate that warrants careful attention and initial reactions show that not everyone is on board with the camera company’s approach.
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