Ring Cam Doggie Rescue???

A couple of days ago Lee Camp wrote an article called ‘A Super Bowl Ad Accidentally Showed The Horrific Future of America’ for his substack. I didn’t watch the Super Bowl, even though it featured the Seattle Seahawks and was close to my old home town (Los Gatos, CA), and very close to where I went to college as an undergraduate (University of Santa Clara). So, I never saw this ad. But after reading this article, I’m determined, I am NEVER going to see this ad. And I’m not getting a Ring Camera. And I’ll find my dog, if he gets lost, the old fashioned way, by going out there and searching for him and calling for him and getting neighbors to help…

One of the old fashioned ways of finding your dog – calling it, being outside with it, walking with it… So darned old fashioned! From image.freepik.com

From Camp's article:

In the Amazon Ring ad a poor little beautiful sad doggie goes missing. A little white girl cries. A man sobs uncontrollably. Then we find out the dog can be found using the Ring Cam Mass Surveillance Doggie Rescue™ app. The man with AI hair in the ad says, “One post of the dog’s photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match. [It] then uses AI to help find the lost dog.”

This is wonderful! You can find your lost dog! …Or maybe instead of a lost dog, you can just type into the search box: “Black man in the neighborhood.” And then every camera in a ten-mile radius will let you watch that black man (or any black man) to make sure he’s not up to something. …Or you could type in: “college girl walking down the street” and then watch her throughout the neighborhood for her entire walk home.

And he goes on:

But what if your missing adorable puppy cute puppy dog has hot-wired a car and skipped town? Have no worries! Amazon’s Ring has signed a deal with Flock Safety, which has deals with police departments across the country. Flock cameras monitor license plates in many cities using their gigantic surveillance network. And luckily for your adorable driving puppy cute puppy doggie, Flock monitors cars whether the driver has done anything wrong or not. They then share that surveillance with police upon request.

But the nation’s 800,000 police officers have promised they will only use Amazon’s fun and exciting new panopticon for good, not evil.

Just think of the possibilities of the new Ring Cam Mass Surveillance Doggie Rescue System™:
• Adorable puppy cute puppy dogs will never go missing again.
• Abusive spouses will never be able to abuse a partner in their front yard again.
• Murderers will never be able to easily bury a body in the backyard again.
• Sexy US postal employees will never go un-ogled again.
• Food delivery people will finally be watched as they bend over to place a bag on your front steps.
• Annoying neighbors will finally be filmed as they do annoying nefarious things like sit on their porch and eat an apple.
• Folks can watch teenagers for fun or profit.
• Squirrels.

So, everyone in America needs to do their patriotic duty and attach an Amazon Ring Cam Mass Surveillance Doggie Rescue Device™ to their front door, back door, and hell, living room ceiling, immediately. Otherwise the good people at Amazon Ring Cam will murder your missing dog.

Seriously though, are you noticing a trend?

When our data was first mass-surveilled, we were told it was to catch terrorists. When drones first started flying over American skies, we were told it was to catch pedophiles. When they started watching all of our license plates everywhere we went, we were told it was to catch criminals on the run.

Every right you give up will be couched in something moral and pure and cute.

I gotta admit, dog surveillance was not something I ever thought about, and where it can/could/will/would lead? But I guess others are thinking about it too:
MSN article, DailyWire Article, PetaPixel Article (yea, I know, what? PetaPixel – Cameras in the digital age!), The Verge, Yahoo News, and most other news places have a story about this too. Hah!

Here's the open thread! What's up, whatcha doing? Reading? Thinking? Listening to? Remember, everything is interesting if you dive deep enough, so tell us about where you're diving!