ON 8 February, during the Super Bowl in the United States, Ring doorbells could be used to see a whole lot more than owners realised. A commercial promoted a feature called “Search Party” that uses AI-powered image recognition to find a lost dog by scouring footage from Ring cameras across a region. According to US Senator Ed Markey, the technology in Ring’s doorbell cameras could be used to hunt down a lost pet—or a person, a claim he made on social media.
The article notes that Ring was bought by Amazon in 2018 and that police can access Ring footage both inside the company and outside it. Today’s Lock and Code podcast features Matthew Guariglia, senior policy analyst at Electronic Frontier Foundation, discussing Ring’s long history of police partnerships and the implications for what people open themselves up to when purchasing a Ring device.