Nilay Patel

And the guardrails around them are just as weak as whatever makes us feel uncomfortable about Ring.

I'm not sure how to feel about all that video, especially in a world where AI makes it easy to fake, and having some source of truth seems more important than ever.

Ask Jamie about that too, whether Ring will control all the video and sign it with some metadata so people can ensure it's real.

presuming we have to have an authenticated server, right?

There's a crime in my neighborhood and I'm opted in and we're going to say the cops can only get the video from the ring server because that's where we know it's true.

I might not be as in control of my video anymore.

You get the feeling we'll be coming back to that idea quite a lot in the years to come.

But today Ring has canceled its deal with Flock, and Flock itself is putting out blog posts flatly saying it does not have a contract with ICE, and noting that Ring's other partner Axon does have a contract with ICE.

In the meantime, Dog Search Party is still active and on by default, although you can just go into settings in the Ring app and flip it off.

And the enormous amount of video that we are all generating all the time

is still being uploaded to servers run by big companies that have their own dealings with governments and law enforcement agencies far outside of our control.

There's a lot of potential solutions to all of these problems.

A lot of ways to design regulations that might balance out privacy and civil liberties with the real needs of police.

But right now, in 2026 America, I'm not sure we're really going to be able to do that.

So in the meantime, we're going to keep pushing the leaders of these companies on what they really mean.

And keep running the answers so you can listen and decide.

I also think it's about time we all started thinking about how the technology we use to make our own lives better affects other people.

Because that bigger conversation we need to have, yeah, that's what it's really about.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you for listening to Decoder.