Ring has been getting plenty of critical press lately, with concerns over local police and federal law enforcement potentially gaining access to sensitive surveillance camera footage across the country. Anti-ICE activists have been calling for a boycott over Ring’s announcement that it would be cooperating with Flock Safety, which has built a nationwide surveillance network used by police to track license plates. And it’s not like any of these concerns are really new. Ring has gotten heat over privacy concerns for most of its existence, though there’s renewed interest in how surveillance tech is being used in 2026 as federal agents terrorize cities like Minneapolis, threatening anyone who isn’t white with deportation and executing observers in the streets.
It’s against this backdrop of bad PR that Ring, a subsidiary of Amazon, has expanded a feature that helps people find their lost dogs. And while the company credits the feature with helping find roughly one dog per day, a laudable achievement, no doubt celebrated by pet owners across the country, it comes at a time when every American is trying to weigh the pros and cons of blanketing the globe with cameras watching our every move.
“Ring has expanded Search Party for Dogs, an AI-powered community feature that enables your outdoor Ring cameras to help reunite lost dogs with their families, to anyone in the U.S. who needs help finding their lost pup,” Amazon said in a press release posted online Monday.
The Search Party feature allows Ring users to put out an alert to neighbors within the Ring ecosystem when their dog has gone missing, similar to existing apps like PawBoost. And neighbors can opt in to have their own camera on the lookout for any dog that might look similar. The feature has been expanded to allow people without Ring cameras to download the app and post their missing dog as well.
Everyone can get behind the idea of helping find lost dogs. But the feature feels like a PR move that pulls attention from the threat of omnipresent surveillance in an ostensibly free society: the fact that every American’s device can be turned against them in an instant. If you don’t like it, well, I guess you like lost dogs.
Ring says federal law enforcement is not given access to the features that allow authorities to request access to footage from Ring users. The company explains that local police must make a relatively narrow request for footage in a specific geographic area and a time-bound request within a 12-hour span. Police also need to provide an investigation number and explain what kind of crime they’re investigating, something that users can search for themselves if they’re trying to decide whether to provide their own footage to the cops. A spokesperson for Ring told Gizmodo on Monday that they hadn’t seen any requests related to immigration and that if the company found a local police department surreptitiously providing an agency like ICE with security footage, it would cut off that department from access.
“Ring has no partnership with ICE, does not give ICE videos, feeds, or back-end access, and does not share video with them,” Ring spokesperson Emma Daniels told Gizmodo in a statement.
But those safeguards might be cold comfort in a political environment where the U.S. federal government doesn’t seem bound by any rules. A judge in Minnesota recently noted that ICE violated nearly 100 court orders in the state during January alone.
Authorities can also get footage directly from Ring through a judicial warrant, and the company told Gizmodo that an administrative warrant isn’t sufficient.
“Like all companies, Ring may receive legally valid and binding demands for information from law enforcement, such as search warrants, subpoenas, or court orders,” said Daniels. “We do not disclose customer information unless required to do so by law, or in rare emergency situations when there is an imminent danger of death or serious physical injury. Outside of that legal process, customers control which videos are shared with law enforcement.”
Judicial warrants are issued by real judges who are part of the judicial branch, as opposed to immigration “judges” that are housed under the executive branch and the U.S. Department of Justice. The distinction matters because administrative warrants aren’t sufficient to demand entry into a private residence. However, the New York Times broke news last week that ICE has told its agents that administrative warrants are enough to go storming into any house they like.
All of which is to say that when the rules are breaking down, it’s important to pay attention to what private individuals and companies do in the face of tyranny. Will Ring really pull the plug if ICE tries to abuse its power or gain access to footage through a local police department? We don’t really know. And as we all get used to being constantly on video thanks to a combination of state surveillance and private cameras, it makes sense that a company like Ring would want to highlight the positives of our global panopticon.
One positive? It’s easier to help your neighbors find Fido. Unfortunately, it might also help the feds find your neighbor.
Source: gizmodo.com
