Normalizing surveillance under the banner of helping lost pets

Now, surveillance doesn’t arrive announcing itself as surveillance. It shows up wagging its tail, asking for help, and hoping you won’t notice that the cameras never stop looking.

The product manager behind Ring/Amazon’s expanded “Search Party” feature may actually care about pet safety and animal kindness: a lost dog, a community alert that helps find the lost pup. What it really does is further normalize a private surveillance network that conditions people to accept constant monitoring, expanded data sharing, and passive parti…