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Ring CEO Jamie Siminoff has indicated that the company’s controversial Search Party feature might not always be just for lost dogs, . A creepy surveillance tool being used to surveil. Who could ?
“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,” Siminoff wrote in an email to staffers. “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.”
The words “zero out crime in neighborhoods” are particularly troubling. It is, however, worth noting that this is just an email and doesn’t necessarily indicate a plan by the company. Siminoff wrote the email back in October when , which was months . He did end the thread by noting he couldn’t “wait to show everyone else all the exciting things we are building over the years to come.”
One of those things could be the recently-launched “Familiar Faces” tool, which uses facial recognition to identify people that wander into the frame of a Ring camera. It seems to me that a combination of the Search Party tech, which uses the combined might of connected Ring cameras, with the Familiar Faces tech could make for a very powerful surveillance tool that excels at finding specific individuals.
Siminoff also suggested in an earlier email to staffers that Ring technology could have been used to catch Charlie Kirk’s killer by leveraging the company’s Community Requests feature. This is a tool that allows cops to ask camera owners for footage, thanks to a partnership with the police tech company Axon.
Ring had via a partnership with a surveillance company called Flock Safety. The companies after a Super Bowl ad spotlighting the Search Party tool triggered public outcry. Ring didn’t cite public sentiment for this decision, rather saying the integration would require “significantly more time and resources than anticipated.”
Ring has responded to 404 Media’s reporting, saying in an email that Search Party “does not process human biometrics or track people” and that “sharing has always been the camera owner’s choice.” This response did not provide any information as to what the future will hold for the company’s toolset.
The organization has been . “Our mission to reduce crime in neighborhoods has been at the core of everything we do at Ring,” founding chief Jamie Siminoff said when Amazon back in 2018.
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