Let’s talk about Ring, lost dogs, and the surveillance state

Ring's Super Bowl advertisement promoting its Search Party feature, which uses camera footage to find lost dogs, sparked controversy over surveillance and privacy concerns because the same technology could be used to track and locate people without consent. Critics, including Senator Ed Markey, argued the ad represented mass surveillance and called for Ring to stop using facial recognition (technology that identifies people by analyzing their faces) on its doorbells. Four days after the backlash, Ring canceled its planned partnership with Flock Safety, a company whose surveillance systems had been accessed by ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement).