The Spy Next Door: Are Smart Doorbells Building a Surveillance State?

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The Spy Next Door: Are Smart Doorbells Building a Surveillance State?

Article Published February 14, 2026

This article originally appeared on the Newsweek website on February 14, 2026.

By Jesus Mesa

What was supposed to be a feel-good Super Bowl moment — a lost dog rescued by a high-tech neighborhood “Search Party” — instead triggered a wave of backlash no one anticipated. The 30-second spot showcased Amazon Ring’s new “Search Party” feature, which uses artificial intelligence to scan Ring cameras across entire neighborhoods, purporting to reunite families with missing pets and even monitor for wildfires.

The anxieties sparked by Ring’s ad coincide with a high-profile case involving Google’s Nest cameras that reignited concerns about what smart devices capture — and retain.

“We need to ensure that companies establish clear rules about when data can be stored and accessed and make sure that footage that is supposed to be deleted is not secretly retained,” Betsy Cooper, Director of the Aspen Policy Academy, a cybersecurity and technology policy program at the Aspen Institute, told Newsweek.

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The Spy Next Door: Are Smart Doorbells Building a Surveillance State?

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