Big Brother Won’t Save Your Lost Dog
Photo via Mass 50501 Volunteer
Politics in the US are more divisive than ever, but there are still a few topics on which most Americans can agree: apple pie is delicious, football is popular, and dogs are adorable. A penchant for protecting our four-legged friends is normally a positive, but on Super Bowl Sunday, Americans’ love for our canine companions was weaponized against us by Amazon’s Ring cameras, their partnership with Flock, and Flock’s dealings with ICE.
The Search Party commercial shows a young girl joyously reuniting with her lost dog, a sweet yellow lab named Milo. “Be a hero in your neighborhood,” the ad propagandizes as it shows how their AI-powered cameras made Milo’s rescue possible. At first glance, this appears to be a good thing, especially to adamant dog lovers who might worry for their own pet’s safety. But hidden under this happy facade—and some frankly pathetic statistics of how much good this feature is actually doing—is a much darker truth. These cameras are helping our government to surveil, detain, and deport us and our neighbors without any probable cause or due process—and we should all be able to agree that such a prospect is terrifying.
Ring cameras, like the one shown in the ad, are made by Amazon, and are advertised to have high-quality video akin to what the human eye is capable of, but with the added features of a 10x zoom and low-light settings that allow the AI-powered system to clearly capture everything, even in the dark. In addition to Amazon being highly problematic all on its own, Ring has recently partnered with Flock, a wide-spread operator of surveillance technology. Though Flock and Ring both claim their goals are to increase safety and thwart crime, the reality is that Flock’s AI-powered automatic license plate readers (ALPRs) and similar surveillance systems are already making our communities more dangerous, not less so.
Flock’s ALPRs have a sordid history. Their use has led to police terrorizing children and their families, including a six-year-old girl who was held at gunpoint, face-down on hot pavement and a 12-year-old girl who was handcuffed on her knees at gunpoint. ALPRs are also being used to restrict reproductive rights, again under the flimsy guise that this surveillance is somehow protecting us. Furthermore, Flock has cooperated with the federal government and enabled ICE’s unlawful detainings and deportations.
Flock is only supposed to share their surveillance data with local law enforcement, but lookup data shows that town, city, and state police have performed over 4,000 lookups at the request of the federal government or with an immigration-related focus. Some municipalities, including sanctuary cities like Boston, are refusing to cooperate with ICE. Many of these places may think they have opted out of sharing Flock’s data with other police departments across the nation, including ones who are working with ICE. However, data leaks and hacking render even the best of intentions useless. If the data system is being fed into an AI-enabled machine, then it’s a risk we can’t afford to take.
The bottom line is that Flock’s ALPRs and similar surveillance technology are an invasion of privacy and a violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects anyone who has their feet on US soil—citizen or otherwise—from unreasonable searches and seizures without probable cause. Despite this, these cameras—which come with a price tag of at least $3,000 each—are appearing everywhere. You can see just how close to your home this Orwellian surveillance system has infiltrated on DeFlock’s interactive map, and Eyes Off Massachusetts has information about ALPRs in individual towns and cities. The last thing we should be doing is spreading the reach of this surveillance technology even further by enabling it in our home security systems. We should not be volunteering ourselves to be guinea pigs for AI’s facial recognition identification experiments. If it can be used to track lost dogs, then it can be weaponized to track people, too, and the current ICE attacks have clearly demonstrated that due process is a thing of the past.
Mass 50501 has started its own Flock Off campaign to fight back, and you can join us by staying informed and recognizing ads like the Search Party one for the propaganda that they are. To protect yourself and your community, you should also deactivate Ring cameras, boycott Amazon, lobby your local municipality to dissolve any partnerships with Flock, and call on your state legislators to pass anti-ALPR bills like H.3755.
So remember to enjoy a slice of apple pie. Commiserate about the Pat’s abysmal Super Bowl performance with your friends. And if you really want to protect dogs, try getting your pet microchipped, participating in neighborhood connection groups, and supporting your local humane society, instead of enlisting in a surveillance program that is supporting governmental overreach, the theft of our private data, and the deportation of our neighbors—all under the direction of a head of Homeland Security who murdered her dog and then bragged about it.
Between the writing and publishing of this article, Ring backed out of their partnership with Flock. This is a great demonstration of how effective public pressure can be!
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