Hello everyone, I'm Kimberly Adams. Welcome back to Make Me Smart, where none of us is as smart as all of us.

Now, it's been a minute, but you may remember this controversial ring ad from this year's Super Bowl.

This is Milo. Pets are family.

But every year, 10 million go missing.

And the way we look for them hasn't changed in years.

Until now.

One post of a dog's photo in the Ring app starts outdoor cameras looking for a match.

Search party from Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs.

Yeah, that one. Ring has gotten a ton of backlash for that ad because if their doorbell cameras can find dogs, obviously they could be used to find and track humans, too,

whether you want to be tracked or not. But it's not just ring. Several companies are part of a growing

network of surveillance in the United States, and many folks are worried about what this means

for average Americans, particularly as more and more reporting comes out about how the federal

government is using a variety of surveillance tools to assist in its mass deportation agenda. So for a check-in on our

surveillance state, we've got Joseph Cox here to make us smart about this. He covers all

things surveillance and technology at 404 Media. Joseph, welcome to the show. Absolutely. Thank you

for having me. What was your reaction when you saw that ring ad?

Cringe, mostly.

And then the sort of terror set in.

But mostly I was looking at other people's reactions, right?

I have never seen a backlash quite like that to really a technology advert, let alone a surveillance advert. I think this one just really resonated with people because it finally

fulfilled the sort of dormant promise of ring cameras and frankly other surveillance technology as well,

which is that no longer is this going to be a passive surveillance technology that just

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