On Feb. 8 the Seattle Seahawks defeated the New England Patriots during Super Bowl 60. As millions tuned in to watch the game, they were presented with a strange advertisement from the home security company, Ring. At first glance, it seemed wholesome, but it carried an unsettling undertone. The commercial was intended to introduce an artificial intelligence “search party” feature that would have utilized Ring devices to track down lost pets. The advertisement’s heartwarming story of finding a lost dog, however, couldn’t distract viewers from questioning how easily this feature could monitor their every move.
At its core, the commercial showcased an algorithm designed to watch, record, and analyze people’s movements without their consent, all framed under the guise of public and community service. While the Ring company has since cancelled the release of the feature, AI-driven surveillance technologies, especially when embedded in consumer devices, pose serious threats to privacy.
Developers usually design these systems with good intentions: improve neighborhood safety, optimize our travel, increase our productivity, tailor recommendations, and enhance medical diagnoses. Yet they are underpinned by mass data collection and automated analysis, and they are deployed to conduct techniques such as facial recognition and predictive behavioral analysis. Even if a feature like “search party” was designed to help find a lost pet, it inadvertently introduced a system that could scour footage from multiple homes without clear boundaries that decided who could see it, how long this data is stored or how this footage might be repurposed and weaponized.
The most well-known example of such data collection was the Patriot Act, which was signed into law in 2001. This allowed the NSA to collect the telephone metadata of domestic citizens after September 11th, 2001. The clause that allowed the bulk collection of telephone metadata was only put to end in 2015. However, the Patriot Act as a whole has yet to be fully repealed, with a bill having been introduced to do so in 2025.
In 2023, the Federal Trade Commission sued Amazon, Ring’s parent company, for privacy violations, alleging that the company failed to adequately protect users’ video data. They found that Ring allowed employees and contractors overly broad access to private camera footage, enabling workers to view and download recordings from inside customers’ homes. Amazon agreed to settle, paying $5.6 million and implementing additional safeguards, including limiting employee access to footage and deleting data and algorithms from improperly accessed footage. Amazon was also ordered to pay $25 million in a separate settlement over privacy violations involving its Alexa devices and the retention of children’s voice recordings and location data. Amazon assured parents they could control and delete the storage of voice recordings or location data, yet the company failed to comply with parents’ requests, and kept children’s data to train Alexa’s algorithm.
According to the Pew Research Center, in 2023, 71% of Americans said they are concerned about how the government uses the data it collects. In 2019, 62% of Americans believed it was impossible to go through daily life without having companies or the government collect their data. Constant monitoring changes what privacy means. Once, it was about controlling who had access to your personal information. Today, most services we use collect explicit details about our habits, preferences, and daily routines. For example, 78% of Americans do not fully understand how the government handles personal data, and 59% feel the same way about corporate-collected data. Most people have no practical way of knowing which data is being collected, how it is analyzed, or how algorithmic decisions might affect their lives. Yet algorithms and their outputs are employed to make decisions with real-world consequences that affect people’s livelihoods.
The danger lies in the invisibility and normalization of these systems; everyone interacts with AI-driven tools or algorithms daily without understanding that their behavior is being monitored and analyzed. Continued acceptance of this technology without any understanding of how it functions erodes fundamental concepts of privacy and autonomy. As a result, it makes it easier for both corporations and governments to extend their reach. If we, as citizens, cannot question or challenge the systems that shape our opportunities and lives every day, then the possibility of ever holding these systems accountable becomes nearly impossible.
