Leaked Email Suggests Ring Plans to Expand ‘Search Party’ Surveillance Beyond Dogs
Ring’s controversial, AI-powered “Search Party” feature isn’t intended to always be limited only to dogs, the company’s founder, Jamie Siminoff, told Ring employees in an internal email obtained by 404 Media.
In October, Ring launched Search Party, an on-by-default feature that links together Ring cameras in a neighborhood and uses AI to search for specific lost dogs, essentially creating a networked, automated surveillance system. The feature got some attention at the time, but faced extreme backlash after Ring and Siminoff promoted Search Party during a Super Bowl ad. 404 Media obtained an email that Siminoff sent to all Ring employees in early October, soon after the feature’s launch, which said the feature was introduced “first for finding dogs,” but that it or features like it would be expanded to “zero out crime in neighborhoods.”
“This is by far the most innovation that we have launched in the history of Ring. And it is not only the quantity, but quality,” Siminoff wrote. “I believe that the foundation we created with Search Party, first for finding dogs, will end up becoming one of the most important pieces of tech and innovation to truly unlock the impact of our mission. You can now see a future where we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods. So many things to do to get there but for the first time ever we have the chance to fully complete what we started.”
Archive: http://archive.today/xKxOd
https://www.404media.co/leaked-email-suggests-ring-plans-to-expand-search-party-surveillance-beyond-dogs/Open linkView original on pawb.social
No way! It seemed so authentic when they said they’d search for dogs.
Imagine how evil you have to be to use dogs to sell mass surveillance.
I’m shocked! Shocked, I tell you.
Ok… I’m not shocked at all.
Imagine spending millions on an ad to alert people to your evil scheme.
Proof that you don’t have to be smart to be rich and powerful.
It shows you how insular these people must be. That ad was the result of meeting after meeting, plan after plan. They had convinced themselves that the public would eat it up. We would be like "Holy shit that's amazing, let's give you ALL our data and video and privacy!". They actually thought we would go for it. lol.
To be fair, I'm actually pleasantly surprised that people didn't go for it.
It's not like majority of people seemed to give a shit about privacy not too long ago...
Same.
I was sure the emotional manipulation tactic would be extremely effective. Guess it was a little too blatant, even for the general public.
My 12 year old was sold on the idea. But she's 12 and may love dogs more than people.
I'm in my 30s and I like most dogs more than most people.
Yep, 99% of dogs beat 99.99999% of people. And 99% of cats do the same.
I'm with you on dogs.
But i'd never trust a cat... They know why.
They are megalomaniacs, the owners and ceo's that were chosen by those owners' and their board members. They surround themselves with yes men, anyone telling them they are wrong will be removed from their lives, as they fashion themselves after the president and other leaders above them that do the same.
The proof for that is abundant.
Have you seen the grammar used in emails to & from Trump & Epstein?
There’s a technical reason for all the equal signs, but you’re right in general that they seem stupid.
https://www.elizabethspiers.com/on-the-epstein-files-and-oligarchs-with-room-temperature-iqs/
No kidding? Next thing you will be telling us that chatcontrol and age checks on the internet will be used for more than just protecting kids from pedophiles and be extended to crushing dissent and opposition and democracy itself, and building social scores on us with all information including these cameras that will be used secretly against us in a way we cannot know or challenge to determine our jobs, background checks, police scrutiny, how courts and government treats you, how business treats you, the prices you are offered online and in digital price tag stores (coming soon,) and even what search results you are shown. All calculated by the antichrist's company, for said pedophile or pedophile adjacent politicians deciding which of us are undesirable, and given a way to slip names of people into the bad score list themselves, always a selling perk under the table to leaders.
It's always just a trojan horse to get in the walls. It will never end with finding pets, with stopping child abuse, what have you. They find the instance that no one can disagree with then accuse people of helping child abusers, maybe you are a child abuser yourself! It's not subtle. All done by people that are mostly on the epstein's redacted and unreleased pages for actually fucking children.
Dont forget claims they also ate children.
You know.. here's the thing..
Years ago, I'd be on Reddit and reading the usual rants and raves about the government, and how the public should be wary of it and we are heading into a security state.. and I always positied that the real threat actors WRT privacy and security were going to be companies like facebook and google and the businesses that made internet-connected devices.
Compared to them, as far as data colleciton and surveillance of people - the government was filled with rank amateurs.
I'd consistently get downvoted or pooh-poohed for being "naive."
God fucking dammit.. on this.. I am absolutely pissed off that I was calling this one - and have been - for over a decade.
FML, I hate this SOOOOOO much.
Sounds like naked people in a cage wondering about which is more dangerous: the leopard or the lion.
It's certainly frustrating pointing out obvious end results and seeing all the fanboys and normies call you a conspiracy theorist or just dunk on you.
There's no such thing as privacy anymore. People still believe it exists, but it's dead and gone.
You can bet none of those people that argued with you and ridiculed your predictions will admit it now. That personality never will. How far back are we talking about with those predictions though out of curiousity?
Oooh, IIRC it dawned on me about the time that facebook insisted all users have their actual names on their pages. (I can't remember when that was, maybe 2012 or 2013? Not sure, it was a while ago however.)
That was the red flag for me.
It was also the point when I deleted my posts and comments on fb (it took months to get it all) then unfriended everyone and logged out for a month. When I logged back in I had a handful of comments on the (ex-)friends pages that popped up, since the feed will scour the servers to show you content on your home page, so I re-friended them, deleted the comments, logged out and waited another month. After the last time I logged in (I did four deletion waves of comments) fb was showing me totally random strangers "I Might Know.."
Perfect.
I then changed up my primary email on FB to my yahoo throwaway, logged out for another month, logged in with the new email and made a totally fake name for myself.. Who I am does not exist on facebook, nor are any friends or family listed as friends and no one can see anything on my page.
I have to say, it's nice that they got called out on this immediately for a change.
The whole "find lost dogs" thing was likely the result of a single meeting with the agenda item "how do we sell this thing we are already doing as anything other than mass surveillance for state actors?" They probably ended it early.
Blatantly ripping off the chatcontrol and age checks reasoning, and the masterbaitorbase. To protect the children, and stop pedophiles, we need to id every account, and every ip, connected to your likeness and government id, in the hands of private interests to verify at that, and record everything you say, look at , and do, combining all information on you, private from data brokers to this and government, to run ai threat assessment and social scores to secretly determine winners and losers, run by the antichrist's company, the guy that said he wants to spray his critics with fentanyl from drones.
Who could argue against surrendering every and all information to the worst companies in the world to use their dystopian new technology on if it's for the kids? I mean they know the dangers to the kids as the antichrist was a great eptein pal. It's transparent.
And in other breaking news: the sky is blue, tree pretty, and fire hot.
Only if it's a lemon tree.
As long as there are no whores about.
I bet we could convince the lemon stealing whores to join the lemon party.
Hey! It's their chinese year, show some respect!
A lemon tree, my dear Watson?
Why anyone would have non-locally hosted video surveillance in and around their home is beyond me.
You're basically begging corporations/governments to spy on you.
This is what the data centers are for. And also why all hard drive capacity for 2026 has already been sold. Video takes up a massive amount of space.
Between Ring and Jeffrey Epstein, it's surprising how explicit criminals are about their criminal intentions.
When a criminals moves into the palace, the nation changes into mob turf.
The western gangster king. The eastern gangster king being putin.
They lied?!
No shit
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Ancient book of Arabic numerals reveals 2 comes after 1.
Yeah, we all saw that coming and it's exactly why everyone's freaking out about it.
Lol fucking duh
What if your kid runs off? Your elderly mother wondered off? A break in was reported down the road? What if all non whites are labeled terrorist? We need to watch you 24/7. Obey
It's about dogs and crime. Sure.
c/noshitsherlock
Ok guys, hear me out.
I need you to buy these cameras and put them on your face.
We will record your video for you and keep it safe for you and never give your data to anybody and we'll do all of this for free.
We'll also give you all of the software and setup all of the servers for you. Don't you worry your silly head about needing to learn anything about how to use technology, just give us your life-long dependence as we'll take care of everything. Also, AI.*
Also, you will help save puppies and children and you are on the side of puppies and children, right? This is a great deal! You can stop reading here, just click the button to agree... for the puppies.
* ::: spoiler spoiler You also grant to us full, exclusive, worldwide, in perpetuity, until the sun falls the rights to use your likeness, words, thoughts, essence, and produces in any manner that we, in our sole discretion, see fit and you also agree to submit to binding arbitration for any disputes
In exchange, We will never give away your data. But we will ruthlessly exploit OUR licensed copy of your data to sell to anybody who can do a wire transfer. :::
FYI -
Breaking news: Fire is hot.
fuckin'… they were expanding into dogs to distract from what the system was really for
I never even heard of it before the superb owl ad. I couldn't believe how dirty it was to tug at our heartstrings to make us pay them to spy on us.
What the fuck, America?
Wait till you learn about flock cameras and the raven sound detection
Is that the one listening out for gunshots? I don't necessarily have a problem with that unless it's listening in on conversations or something. But that would be a pretty good mic.
always assume the equipment of our open air prison panopticon is more capable than they admit, but also never let them stop you from speaking truth
No its only for listening for lost dog barks. /s
Hell, they were saying it was for dogs so stupid people would get their heart strings pulled and blindly sign up.
No shit Sherlock
Boycott ring
Wait… what?!
They mean to cats too, right?!?
Y’all just need to think about the shareholders.
Oh, thank god, I was worried if there might not be a worldwide surveillance dragnet for in case I lost a pet iguana.
Fucking scumbags.
😱
CREEE PEEEE!
And in other "no shit" headlines...
And they can ONLY Achieve this MONUMENTAL and IMPORTANT Task of Global Surveillance if we give THEM Tax Breaks! How EXCITING!
-American Politicians!
No Duh?!
Anyone remember "Police Blotter" reports in local papers? Some were funny.
But they mostly gave people a very dark view of the world outside. This led to metal bars on doors and windows, sale of pricey security systems, and folks walking around scared of their shadow. That all moved over to apps like NextDoor, Citizen, and Ring's Neighbors.
Fear is a primal driver. People on those apps are constantly reporting "odd looking people" in their neighborhood. Not surprisingly, the pet "Search Party" feature goes through Neighbors. Those same users are primed to see bad people everywhere. They will happily accept any feature that promises "zero crime neighborhoods."
ANY feature.
I'm.... flabbergasted. Unbelievable. Who would've thought?
pikachu_face.jpg
Sorry, I only have a YouTube link for this: https://youtu.be/ROFblZ_-9q4
If you haven't seen it, Wyse (Ring competitor) released a pretty funny ad about this.
BOLO: Leftist dissenter. Apprehend at all costs.
Uploading to search party for facial match.......
Duhhhhhhhhh
FWIW, Ring announced they were canceling their partnership with Flock a few days ago following the Superbowl ad where they were universally dragged. https://blog.ring.com/about-ring/ring-and-flock-cancel-partnership/
Do I think Ring is still running some sort of analytics on video feeds? Probably. Should you put anything from Amazon directly in the trash? Absolutely.
Silver lining I guess is that public pressure still works at least a little when companies try to go straight dystopian.
The partnership will happen later on when the noise has died down, and it won't be publicized.
Yeah, exactly. That shit's not gone at all. It's just hidden for now. And if we the public don't pay for it directly as a feature, these companies will still scoop up the data and just sell it to each other.
They're still doing the same with a different company. Don't remember the name.
Well I'll be got-damned, looks like Search Party is a feature native to the Ring Neighbors platform and separate from the whole Flock partnership. https://www.cnet.com/home/security/what-does-rings-search-party-ai-pet-tracking-do-to-your-privacy-i-got-the-details/
Specifically, this feature appears opt-out, so if someone does have a Ring camera, good idea to take a spin through the settings. Or, the easiest remediation was my original suggestion, chuck it in the bin (or responsibly dispose of it, if you can).
Hell my relatives gifted me an amazon Alexa. I never even opened the box it came in. Lol
Yeah it's called tracking everything that's happening and feeding it to AI so AI can predict and alert the owners of whatever we they decided is important to know about and predict, like threats to their power and ambitions by the stupid masses who should just accept they're slaves.
Breaking News! Multiple forks discovered in kitchen, exclusive coverage tonight at 11:00!
Birds?