Ring featured its Search Party function in a Super Bowl advertisement, but the promotion failed to generate positive excitement. Rather, it raised alarms among those wary of widespread monitoring systems.
Marketed as a method to return lost dogs to their owners, Search Party achieves this by linking personal Ring cameras into a collective monitoring system. Artificial intelligence in each device detects animals entering its view, and the combined video streams help locate missing pets. This setup raises concerns about its adaptability for human tracking purposes.
Search Party is not a recent introduction, having been unveiled the previous year. During its initial 90 days, it assisted in recovering 99 missing dogs, as stated by Amazon CEO Andy Jassy. Each year, about 10 million pets disappear in the United States. Some users hesitate to contribute to a broader surveillance infrastructure given the feature's apparent 0.005% effectiveness rate, though this figure may improve with wider use.
Numerous Ring owners seek to turn off the option, which activates automatically upon setup. Instructions are available to address this need.
The process is straightforward: Launch the Ring application, access the menu via the upper-left icon, choose Control Center, select Search Party, and switch off the toggles for Search for Lost Pets and Natural Hazards. Perform these steps individually for every connected camera.
Questions persist regarding data sharing with police authorities. For added caution, users can remove stored recordings by selecting the History tab and choosing the Delete All option.