"The feature is advertised as a way to reunite missing dogs with their owners, a noble cause indeed, but Search Party does this by turning individual Ring devices into a surveillance network. Each camera uses AI to identify pets running across its field of vision and all feeds are pooled together to potentially identify lost animals. I've never seen a slope quite so slippery, as the technology could easily be rejiggered to track people."
"Search Party was first announced last year. In that time it has been used to find 99 lost dogs in 90 days of use, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Approximately ten million pets go missing in America each year. Many people aren't keen on helping to create a surveillance state for a tool with what looks to be around a 0.005 percent success rate. That percentage is sure to rise with mass adoption, but you get the jist."
"Just open the Ring app and tap the menu in the top-left corner. Next, select Control Center. Then, tap Search Party and toggle the settings to Disable for both Search for Lost Pets and Natural Hazards. Repeat this process for each camera. There has also been some confusion as to what Ring will share with law enforcement agencies. If you want to go a step further, delete all of your saved videos by tapping the History icon and then "Delete All.""
Ring's Search Party uses AI across individual Ring cameras to detect pets and pool video feeds into a shared network to locate lost animals. The Super Bowl ad promoted reuniting missing dogs but triggered privacy concerns because the same system could be repurposed to track people. Search Party was announced last year and reportedly found 99 lost dogs in 90 days. Many users object to the feature being enabled by default given low apparent success versus surveillance risks. Users can disable Search Party in the Ring app and delete saved videos to limit sharing.
Read at Engadget
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