There are few things everyone can rally behind as much as finding a lost dog. But what if that mission is actually a workaround for mass surveillance?
That’s the question many people are asking following a Super Bowl commercial from Ring, Amazon’s doorbell camera and home security brand. The 30-second video shows a series of missing dog posters and claims that 10 million pets go missing every year.
It pitches Ring’s Search Party feature as the solution.
Launched in November, Search Party takes a photo of the pet and taps into Ring cameras across the area. They can then use AI to identify the missing pet and send an alert. The ad claims that at least one dog a day has been found since the feature launched.
It sounds like a happy ending, except that critics of Search Party see the ad’s framing as a way to normalize widespread biometric identification and a loss of privacy.
Take a response from WeRateDogs, a dog-lovers’ account connected to 15/10 Foundation, a nonprofit raising money to get necessary medical help for shelter dogs.
In a video posted to Bluesky on Tuesday, the brand’s creator, Matt Nelson, states, “Neither Ring’s products nor business model are built around finding lost pets, but rather creating a mass surveillance network by turning private homes into surveillance outposts and well-meaning neighbors into informants for ICE and other government agencies.”
Solutions for finding lost dogs already exist
Nelson further claims that Ring’s success rate of one dog found per day equals about 0.03% of reports shared.
Instead of using Search Party, he suggests dog owners get their pet microchipped—a common means of tracking lost dogs. Vets and some shelters can microchip dogs.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit focused on “defending civil liberties in the digital world,” takes a similar stance on Ring.
“The addition of AI-driven biometric identification is the latest entry in the company’s history of profiting off of public safety worries and disregard for individual privacy, one that turbocharges the extreme dangers of allowing this to carry on,” EFF wrote in response to the ad.
The nonprofit continues: “People need to reject this kind of disingenuous framing and recognize the potential end result: a scary overreach of the surveillance state designed to catch us all in its net.”
EFF points to instances such as in 2023, when Ring had to pay $5.8 million to settle with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) after Ring employees were found to have had extensive access to customer footage—including in intimate spaces. In reaching the settlement, Ring denied violating the law.
In early 2024, Ring claimed it would stop providing footage to the police without a warrant.
But both Nelson and the EFF point to Ring’s late-2025 partnerships with Flock Safety and Axon. The companies can request footage from Ring customers—without a warrant—for a case and then send it to thousands of law enforcement agencies.
Fast Company has reached out to Ring for comment and will update this post if we hear back.
A May 2025 report by 404 Media found that police using Flock’s AI license plate reader regularly put the reason as “ICE.” In a specific case, the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office in Texas, used Flock in its search for a woman who self-administered an abortion.
How to turn off Ring’s Search Party feature
Ring’s Search Party feature is on by default, but users can turn it off. According to Amazon’s Ring support, you can turn off the Search Party feature by:
- Going to the Ring app and tap the menu icon (three lines)
- Clicking Control Center
- Choosing Search Party
- Tapping Enable or Disable Search for Lost Pets (Click the blue Pet icon next to it if you want to turn it on or off for specific cameras)
Nelson’s post on Bluesky has attracted thousands of shares and hundreds of comments, with some pointing to a Reddit thread in which users are saying they plan to return their Ring camera for a refund.