But it did do a surprisingly accurate job of depicting pretty much this exact scenario, 9 (13) years in advance.
As in: sleek FAANG holds a grand showcase of mass surveillance using its ubiquitous user-installed smart cameras, under the guise of a good cause.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Mro9RCAhvE4
(The fictional story is slightly more blunt about it, the good cause being finding wanted persons, rather than lost dogs).
[0]: https://idiallo.com/blog/we-have-all-we-need-for-mass-survei...
What are my subjects doing...tap tap tap...ah there they are. Oh him, he needs to be cancelled, he isn't where I wanted him to be.
Archive link posted because in some cases (not all, strange enough) there's a paywall ("subscribe to continue reading")
So they say.
Your various devices track everywhere you go, who you communicate with, what you search for, what you buy, what audio you listen to, what videos you watch, what games you play, who your family is, all your pictures and video you take, who comes and goes from your house, when you sleep, your health data, and much more.
And as a fundamental part of Big Tech's business they accumulate, aggregate and analyze all that information in various ways to increase profits. They don't keep this a secret, but wisely they normally don't brag about it to the general public.
Consumers have shown that are totally willing to give up privacy for convenience. Just don't remind them of it.
Crazy to think that less than two decades later, an even more powerful surveillance technology is being advertised at the Super Bowl as a great and wonderful thing and you should totally volunteer to upload your Ring footage so it can be analyzed for tracking down the Jok... I mean illegal imm... I mean lost pets.
[1] https://www.flocksafety.com/blog/flock-safety-and-ring-partn...
[2] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-roundup
[3] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/10/ice-school-c...
[4] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/effs-investigations-ex...
[5] https://www.aclu.org/news/privacy-technology/flock-ceo-goes-...
But instead, they have to come up with something "wholesome" like finding your lost doggo. The wholesomeness is so forced and cringe that it makes you think they have something to hide. It almost feels like the people who wrote this ad and the people who greenlit it knew something was wrong so they have to come up with a cover story. But like a child smiling at you with his biggest smile while anxiously keeping his hands behind his back, it only makes them more suspicious especially in a time when big tech feels more and more like an adversary than a friend.
In China, kids are accustomed to face recognition early.[1] The kids are checking into school via fare gates with face recognition. Here's an ad for Hikvision surveillance systems showing the whole system.[2] Hikvision has a whole series of videos presenting their concept of a kindly, gentler Big Brother. This is probably the most amusing.[3]
Amazon's concept is in some ways more powerful. They don't need full coverage. Just sparse, but widespread coverage. Anything that moves around will pass through the view of cameras at some point. Suspicious behavior can be detected in the back end cloud processing, which improves over time.
Flock has the same concept. Flock coverage is sparse in terms of area, but widespread.
"1984" was so last cen.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/shorts/SMKG8aLTJ38
After a week, Google finally hunted down/coughed up the footage. I imagine there were some people within Google who realized that if they provided the footage immediately, then it could discourage people from paying for the subscription.
Of course, they must also realize that by not providing the footage sooner, they may have allowed the perp to get away, or the victim to be killed.
how can normal people go to work and produce this output?
(I suppose everyone that is prepared to work at Amazon corporate is... a certain type of person)
I guarantee the vast majority of people LOVE this new feature.
You could purge the world of every single person with evil intentions, and things would maybe get better for a little while, but without fundamentally changing the underlying rules of the system the same thing would play out again with different actors.
"Designed exclusively for tracking objects, and not people or pets"
(emphasis mine)
And these are pretty high profile people whose job it is to represent the people who will also have concerns but don't all contact the verge about it :)
By the way i use ring cameras too but I've already mitigated them a lot. Installed telephoto lenses that can only see the specific area I want them to see, and I removed the microphones so they can't hear what I'm saying. I got some free with my ring alarm so I didn't really want to waste the hardware either.
[1] https://www.howtogeek.com/746588/apple-discusses-screeching-...
Can you imagine people actually searching things out like that? These "people voicing concerns" are like that. Someone has to find something to be enraged about for the sake of finding something to do.
The issue here isn't the recording, it's the packaging it up for sale that's the issue.
A key part of that is when he tells Alfred that he did not even trust himself with that level of surveillance and coded it to only grant access to Alfred. Further, Alfred agrees to aid Batman by accessing the data but simultaneously tenders his resignation.
I doubt Amazon has anyone like Alfred in charge of this thing. Because if they did, the resignation would already have been submitted.
> Batman: [seeing the wall of monitors for the first time at the Applied Sciences division in Wayne Enterprises] Beautiful, isn't it?
> Lucius Fox: Beautiful... unethical... dangerous. You've turned every cellphone in Gotham into a microphone.
> Batman: And a high-frequency generator-receiver.
> Lucius Fox: You took my sonar concept and applied it to every phone in the city. With half the city feeding you sonar, you can image all of Gotham. This is wrong.
> Batman: I've gotta find this man, Lucius.
> Lucius Fox: At what cost?
> Batman: The database is null-key encrypted. It can only be accessed by one person.
> Lucius Fox: This is too much power for one person.
> Batman: That's why I gave it to you. Only you can use it.
> Lucius Fox: Spying on 30 million people isn't part of my job description.
When I first saw the scene I said: "This amount of servers is not remotely enough to pull something like this".
When I think of the scene now: "These amount of servers can do much more than the scene portrays".
I mean, most of the tech presented in the series is almost standard operations procedure via mundane equipment now.
Scary.
Many aspects of that film were deliberately done to explore post 9/11 America. This includes the methods Harvey Dent uses, the things the Joker says, and the surveillance scenes and more.
These discussions surrounding surveillance have been around long before 2008.
As an Austrian I have to wonder, is this name a homage to Josef Fritzl, one of the most well known Austrians of modern time?
Don't get the willies from the warning, learn from it.
His brother and the writer, Jonathan Nolan, is the greatest prophet of our era.
It absolutely boggles my mind that it's legal in the US for a deliverer to just leave a package out in the open for anyone to pick up and consider it "delivered". Might as well just throw it out of the window of your car, it has the same chance of getting picked up by the recipient. Where I live the package has to be handed over to the recipient. If the recipient is not available it will be handed over to a neighbour and this will be noted on a little card that's placed in the recipient's mail box. If that is not possible it will be taken back to the mail office and the recipient can pick it up in person.
Adding video surveillance is no solution. OK, so you saw a random stranger pick up your package. Now what? What are you going to do with that information? Are the police going to start a manhunt because of your 50$ Amazon order?
Ring has been a problem and it has only gotten worse now.
Ring: just want you to know that we record everything whether you pay us or not and we know where you dog is.
Savannah: Where's Ma?
Ring:
Dont hate the player hate the game
It is about incentives and rules of the "game" that drive things. Sure, there are a few evil people but the vast majority of it is normal people responding to broken rules/incentives. Probably you and I both fall in this category :)
Sorry, but people who do things they normally wouldn't because they are rewarded are not good people. They may be 'normal' in a distribution sense, but that doesn't mean the behavior becomes acceptable through it becoming commonplace.
It's also desired by consumers. Parents love tracking their children, spouses track each other. Everyone wants to get a camera to catch porch pirates. Let's not pretend this is something being forced on us by some external evil. The evil is coming from inside the house.
have you seen the cult like statements they make you emit if you want to pass the interview?
I had a colleague that interviewed there (and was accepted)
over the space of that month he completely changed
(and not for the better)
My god how do they live with themselves.
The argument is that it would destroy the character's honor or whatever. But that is also a kind of sacrifice for the greater good. Maybe a lot of those are in fact happening but just not visible.
Unfortunately a very realistic depiction of how many of the brands advertising their security the strongest often have the most ridiculously broken security (flock)
"Oh, you read as well? What do your read?"
"[this book], [that book]"
"Those are all non-fiction, any fiction?"
"I don't read fiction. If I'm not going to learn anything, it's a waste of time."
"..."
I don't think Flock is this Big EviL coMpaNy you are making them out to be.
SFPD reported a 125% homicide clearance rate in 2025 (solving more cases than occurred that year), citing license plate readers (read: Flock) and drones as key factors in providing digital evidence.
A better answer is "refuse to do it without resigning". To begin with it gives you a better chance of preventing it, because maybe they back down, whereas if you do it or leave, someone does it. Then if they fire you, well, that's not really that much worse for you than resigning, but it's worse for them because now they're retaliating against someone for having ethical objections. How does that look in the media or in front of a jury? Which is all the more incentive for them to back down.
The problem with "well just do it a little bit" is that you can travel arbitrarily far in the wrong direction by taking one step at a time.
And also fiction.
Frequently at the same time.
https://www.jfed.net/antisemitismtoolsandresources/neo-nazi-...
One could argue that because it was successfully used to catch Joker, the movie concludes that mass surveillance is sometimes necessary to stop evil, but it's at least presented as a dilemma. A massive corporation coming out and saying "mass surveillance is awesome because you can find lost pets" is a crazy escalation of the surveillance state.
Most bad things have some good part you can point to. Mass surveillance and all of the other police and government aiding technologies usually point to improved conviction rates or something similar. But making police more efficient at convicting people isn't the only goal of society. That's only one part of what makes up a country and it's society. And, as the saying goes: "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
Perhaps we would all be shit-head billionaires if given the opportunity.
Most of us stay within our ethical lane, but then we don't have the money to afford a private island to abuse people on; we don't have to resist the temptation to incite an insurrection, or to shift gold markets by threatening a war ... perhaps we'd be tempted?
You know movies aren't real life, don't you?
For me, it’s a question of when, not if this happens in real life.
They're blockbuster movies about a comic book.
> All criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience, or the audience must at least be aware that such behavior is wrong, usually through "compensating moral value".
Modern cinema and cinematic critique has been so flattened by the constant accusations of filmmakers supporting some "-ism" or another by failing to have their characters directly speak out against it. It's ridiculous.
Then again, I guess the film ends up doing the same thing by only demonstrating concrete benefits alongside theoretical, but unrealized, harms...
It absolutely takes people on a police procedural that drags viewers unwittingly into watching a science fiction show, and I'm totally here for all of it.
The moral norms of societies, in many aspects, changed even more from 1928 to 1946.
For example, it is illegal to carry a loaded handgun onto a plane. Most people would agree that is an acceptable trade of freedom for safety.
There are places with even less safety and more “freedom” than the US so people who take an absolutist view towards freedom also need to justify why the freedoms that the US does not grant are not valuable.
What "freedom" is lost? I gain security and lose no freedoms (unless you are doing something illegal).
When property crime is up 53%.. plenty of people are willing to lose "freedom" whatever you are referring to, in exchange for safety.
Statistically, if we were living in WWII Germany, most of us would not become freedom fighters. We'd keep our head down and support the regime. I think most people like to think of themselves as the exception but that's just "cope".
there's nothing bad with having a camera to spot porch pirates, as long as the data stays private
it becomes problematic when everyone's hooked up to one central place (plus the "AI")
same as the common talking points about CCTV, which always miss the distinction that there's minimal risk if it's only going to some video recorder in the back of the store
it only becomes dangerous when every shop and house are fed back to one central location
and the general public do not understand the difference
But this is hardly unique to Nolan. Probably 90% of Hollywood movies that involve crime have this message in some form.
There is a genuine existential risk, and it's addressed in the best way possible. Military slavery ("conscription") is more evil than disenfranchisement, especially when citizenship is not required to live a good life. Nobody is tricked or coerced into signing up for military service. Potential recruits are even shown disabled veterans to make the risk more salient. There are no signs of racism or sexism.
Other objections are not supported by the film. There is no suggestion that the Buenos Aires attack is a false flag. I've seen people claim it's impossible for the bugs to do this, but it's a film featuring faster-than-light travel. The humans are already doing impossible things, so why can't the bugs? I've also heard complaints that there is no attempt at peace negotiations. There is no suggestion that peace is possible. It's possible among humans because most humans have a strong natural aversion to killing other humans. Real life armed forces have to go to great lengths to desensitize their troops to killing to prevent them from intentionally missing. But humans generally have no qualms about killing bugs, and the bugs in the movie never hesitate to kill humans.
The movie is an inspiring story about people making the right choices in a difficult situation. Some people look at it objectively, and some only react to the aesthetics. Those who look objectively understand it's actually faithful to the spirit of the book despite Verhoeven not intending that.
It's still surveillance, and it's subject to subpoena so it can become government data as needed. The centralization makes things worse, sure, but the desire to monitor others often comes from individual actors.
I can walk down my street and I will be recorded every step of the way by someone. The government didn't mandate this, each homeowner decided they "needed" a camera.
Seems reasonable (although clearly not the intent of the story and not a deliberate “false flag”)
You were recorded walking into an abortion clinic, although face recognition identified as a resident of a state where abortion is illegal.
- Going to your girlfriends place while the wife is at work
- Visiting a naughty shop
- Going into various companies for interviews while employed
With mass surveillance there is the risk of mass data leak. Would you be comfortable with a camera following you around at all times when you're in public? I wouldn't be.
The popular ones with extra-human abilities - Flash, Superman, Spiderman, Captain America, etc, have more normal backgrounds.
Boys with toys though - Batman, Ironman, The Atom, are the 1%. Ant Man I guess is more normal, but he stole his suit (but Hank Pym was reasonably normal too)
Ring’s new Search Party feature has once again drawn backlash for the company. A 30-second ad that aired during Sunday’s Super Bowl showed Ring cameras “surveilling” neighborhoods to locate a lost dog. In the current political climate, a prime-time ad celebrating neighborhood surveillance struck a nerve.
People voiced concerns across social media that the AI-powered technology Ring uses to identify dogs could soon be used to search for humans. Combined with Ring’s recent rollout of its new facial recognition capability, it feels like a short leap for a pet-finding feature to be turned into a tool for state surveillance.
Privacy expert Chris Gilliard told 404 Media that the ad was “a clumsy attempt by Ring to put a cuddly face on a rather dystopian reality: widespread networked surveillance by a company that has cozy relationships with law enforcement and other equally invasive surveillance companies.”
“This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance”
— Sen. Ed Markey
The fears center on the Amazon-owned Ring’s partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that has contracts with law enforcement to use its automated license plate readers, video surveillance systems, and other technologies.
The partnership connects Ring’s massive residential camera network with an organization that has reportedly allowed ICE to access data from its own nationwide camera network.
“This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance,” Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) posted on X. A vocal critic of Ring’s ties to law enforcement, Markey has pressed for greater transparency into Ring’s connections with law enforcement, along with stronger privacy protections for consumers.
Comments on the YouTube video of the ad ranged from “This is a huge problem disguised as a solution,” to “Smart way to gaslight people in mass surveillance.” Video: Ring
Ring spokesperson Emma Daniels told The Verge that Search Party is designed to match images of dogs and is “not capable of processing human biometrics.” Additionally, she maintains that the Familiar Faces facial recognition feature is separate from Search Party. It operates on the individual account level, she said, and there’s no communal sharing as there is with Search Party.
While Familiar Faces is opt-in for each user, Search Party is enabled by default on any outdoor camera enrolled in Ring’s subscription plan. It works by using AI to scan footage in the cloud for the missing dog once the owner uploads a picture to Ring’s Neighbors app. If a match is found, Ring alerts the camera’s owner, who can then choose to share the video or notify the owner through the app.
“These are not tools for mass surveillance.”
— Emma Daniels, Ring
“These are not tools for mass surveillance,” Daniels said. “We build the right guardrails, and we’re super transparent about them.”
While that may be the case today, I asked whether Ring cameras could one day be used to specifically search for people. “The way these features are built, they are not capable of that today,” she said. “We don’t comment on feature road maps, but I have no knowledge or indication that we’re building features like that at this point.”
Ring users can currently share footage from their cameras with local law enforcement during an active investigation through a feature called Community Requests. Unlike previous Ring police partnerships, Community Request goes through third-party companies — the Taser company Axon and, soon, Flock. “The reason we did that is these third-party evidence management systems offer a much more secure chain of custody,” says Daniels. If a user declines a request, no one will be notified.
The company maintains that neither the government nor law enforcement can access its network, and that footage is shared only by users or in response to a legal request. Daniels reiterated what the company had previously told The Verge, that it has no partnerships with ICE or any other federal agency, and said you can see every request agencies have made on its Neighbors app profile.
Additionally, the Flock integration is not currently live, although Daniels had no update on the company’s plans for the partnership following the backlash. She referred me to an earlier response. “As we explore the integration, we will ensure the feature is built for the use of local public safety agencies only — which is what the program is designed for.”
History has shown that tools capable of large-scale surveillance are rarely limited to their original purpose
The problem is that there’s nothing preventing local agencies from sharing footage with federal ones. And while the Super Bowl ad played up heartwarming images of a girl reunited with her puppy, the leap to this technology that can track people in your neighborhood is still very small. Combined with government overreach, it’s not hard to imagine how a powerful network of AI-enabled cameras goes from finding lost dogs to hunting people.
And Ring has a history of partnering with the police. While it has rolled back some of that in recent years, since founder Jamie Siminoff returned, the company has renewed its focus on using its products to prevent crime.
Siminoff said he came back because of the possibilities AI brings. With this technology, he believes neighborhood cameras could be used to virtually “zero out crime” within a year. Given these stated goals and the new capabilities AI can bring, why wouldn’t Ring be planning to add some form of Search Party for People to its cameras?
Eliminating crime is an admirable goal, but history has shown that tools capable of large-scale surveillance are rarely limited to their original purpose. Ring has a responsibility here to protect its users, which it says it is doing. But ultimately, it comes down to how much you can trust a company – and the company it keeps – to never overstep. If Ring is cloaking its ambitions behind our instinct to protect our furry friends, that trust will be hard to find.
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