Nilay Patel

To make it really safe, you want to go from passive surveillance to active surveillance, right?

That's what the studies show.

Now we can just, the camera will literally identify the criminal by face and tell the cops, this person tried to steal a car from this driveway.

And that's the thing that would get you to actually zero out crime.

There's a lot of risk in those steps.

But if I draw the thread from what you're saying, it's all the way to the criminals won't come here because the cameras will know who they are and tell the cops.

Are you willing to go that far?

We'll be right back.

Today, the backlash against surveillance has led Ring to kill that flock deal.

The company is also doing damage control about dog search, telling The Verge that the technology that powers Search Party is not, quote, capable of being used to find people, and that there's no indication that such features are on future roadmaps.

Sure.

It seems obvious that Ring has a lot of trust to earn back here, and certainly that we're all thinking about what it means to put internet-connected security cameras on our homes.

I think that's good, and it's certainly overdue.

But let me complicate this just a little for you.

At the same time this conversation about Ring is happening, we're also watching regular people record the police in ICE with their cell phones, capturing critical documentary evidence about how those agencies are violating the rights of everyday Americans in ways that is leading to change, however slow.

Here's Minnesota Governor Tim Walz telling people to hit record when they see ice so the footage can be used in future prosecutions.

And just this week, the FBI released video that Google appears to have gone and specially recovered from Nest camera systems at Nancy Guthrie's house in order to help identify her kidnapper.

That's a lot of video that's being captured and used in ways that maybe don't feel so invasive.

In some ways, maybe even feel good.

But the systems that create, store, and share that video, they're all the same.