A leaked email from Ring’s founder and CEO, Jamie Siminoff, just spilled the beans on a pretty wild vision for the company’s dog-finding tech, and honestly, it’s a lot more intense than just tracking down Fido. This email, which 404 Media obtained, reveals Siminoff’s plan to expand the “Search Party” feature, originally designed for locating missing pups, into a tool that could “zero out crime in neighborhoods.”
Siminoff sent this email to staff in early October last year, and he’s clearly super hyped about it. He wrote that Search Party, which uses Ring cameras and AI to find lost dogs, is “by far the most innovation that we have launched in the history of Ring.”
He continued, laying out a future where, thanks to this foundation, “we are able to zero out crime in neighborhoods.” Siminoff noted there are “so many things to do to get there but for the first time ever we have the chance to fully complete what we started.”
This isn’t the first time Ring has dipped its toes into features that raise eyebrows
The company recently ended a partnership with surveillance technology firm Flock Safety after a Super Bowl ad for their “Community Requests” feature caused a bit of a stir. That function lets neighbors grant access to their Ring footage to help with local police investigations. The commercial itself showed a lost dog being reunited with its family using the feature, but some viewers found it “dystopian.” Critics pointed out that the technology could easily expand beyond just looking for lost pets.
Siminoff has also previously suggested Ring’s capabilities could be used in serious crime scenarios. After conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed on a university campus in September, Siminoff reportedly said in another email that it “just shows how important the community request tool will be as we fully roll it out.”
And it doesn’t stop there. Ring has been busy rolling out other features that leverage AI and recognition tech. There’s “Familiar Faces,” which uses facial recognition to identify specific people caught on a doorbell camera. Plus, they’ve got “Fire Watch,” an AI-powered feature that warns users about nearby fires. It seems like Ring is really pushing the boundaries of what these home security devices can do.
However, a Ring spokesperson insists that the company’s mission is all about helping communities, not creating a surveillance state. They told a publication that Ring is “focused on giving camera owners meaningful context about critical events in their neighborhoods, like a lost pet or nearby fire, so they can decide whether and how to help their community.”
They specifically clarified that “Search Party helps camera owners identify potential lost dogs using detection technology built specifically for that purpose; it does not process human biometrics or track people.” They also emphasized that sharing footage is always the camera owner’s choice.
Published: Feb 19, 2026 03:00 pm