This Super Bowl commercial introduced a partnership between Ring and the tech company Flock Safety that would allow Ring customers to share doorbell videos to help find lost dogs. But who is this really serving? Hint: Not our pets and definitely not us.
Flock already has cameras in 5,000 communities. It combines automatic license plate reader technology with AI networking to enable communication and resource sharing among police institutions nationwide. "In ten years, Flock will have eliminated crime in the United States," said Flock Safety founder Garrett Langley.
They're saying it's about a "crime-free" world, helping with finding missing people and lost pets, but that's not the whole story. Texas authorities used this technology to track a woman who allegedly self-administered an abortion. According to 404 Media, even ICE uses Flock. Who’s next?
This is surveillance disguised as do-good technology, but we know better. Our people already live under disproportionate surveillance. We don't need any so-called "search parties" taking innocent Black lives for looking "suspicious’; vigilantes and cops already do that. Tech powering a militarized police state that enforces oppressive hierarchies and crushes resistance is technofascism.
Following fierce backlash, Amazon and Flock canceled their partnership, but Ring still has a contract with Axon, another police surveillance company. When convenience is marketed as safety, we have to ask: safety for whom, and at what cost?