What Homeowners Need to Know About Smart Home Cameras

A new Super Bowl ad is raising questions about the power of doorbell cameras.

On Sunday, a Super Bowl ad promoting a new A.I.-powered “Search Party” feature for Amazon’s Ring camera, which activates all the cameras in a neighborhood to find lost dogs, was met with condemnation from Democratic politicians, right wing talking heads and thousands of social media users. The criticism came weeks after Ring announced a partnership with Flock Safety, a company that sells license-plate scanning devices and software, raising concerns that it could soon be used by ICE agents.

And yesterday, authorities released Google Nest video taken the night of Nancy Guthrie’s abduction from her home showing a masked man at her front door. It is not clear yet why the footage took over a week to retrieve.

These developments have many wondering what a smart security camera or doorbell does, who has access to the video they take — and what homeowners can do to secure their own data.

What are you opting into with a smart security camera?

A smart security camera promises a remote way to screen visitors, monitor pets and track package deliveries (or the porch pirates who are stealing them). Different models offer different functions however: Some cameras store video locally, meaning inside the camera or on a hub in your home, which is better for data security but also creates limits, including limits on how much video can be stored and access to more advanced features like A.I. detection. Other smart cameras may let you store video in the cloud, which allows you to access footage even if the camera is stolen or damaged.

Is my footage private?

It depends. As Wirecutter reported last week in response to questions about Ring’s possible cooperation with ICE (which the company has denied), all security camera makers may be compelled by law to share some recordings. Subpoenas, search warrants and court orders, for example, could all result in Ring, Nest or other companies handing over your video or audio. In some cases, this has included not just outdoor camera footage, but indoor as well.

Companies can also share your videos at the request of law enforcement if a situation is deemed an emergency (one in which someone is in immediate danger of death or serious injury). And some companies, like Amazon Ring and Google Nest acknowledge that in some cases they may not disclose having shared user videos with authorities, because of legal restrictions in some instances.

Why are people concerned about Ring’s new feature?

In an ad for Amazon’s Ring camera that ran during the Super Bowl, a new A.I.-powered feature called “Search Party” helps reunite a tearful little girl with her missing dog by activating all the cameras in the neighborhood to find him. The feature works by using A.I. to scan video captured by all the participating Ring cameras in a neighborhood, pinging the device’s user should the reported dog pass in view. The device’s user can then notify the pet’s owner (they can also decline).

Scores of posters online have decried Ring’s new feature as dystopian and terrifying. In a rare unifying moment, members of the political right and left expressed their discontent. Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, posted on X: “This definitely isn’t about dogs — it’s about mass surveillance.” And the conservative commentator Stephen L. Miller wrote, “The Ring cam lost dog ad is just propaganda for mass surveillance.”

The company has clarified its employees “are not able to view, access, or control live streams.” Instead, Ring’s A.I. program analyzes videos automatically; if you’re notified that one of your videos is a match for the missing dog, you have to agree for it to be shared with whomever started the Search Party.

How often do authorities take security camera footage?

Amazon’s Ring cameras and Google’s Nest cameras are owned by tens of millions of people, and the security camera footage for most of them is left alone. However, a number of users each year do have their content shared, and usually without notification.

Every six months Amazon releases a report on Ring’s law enforcement information requests. In the most recently available one (spanning July through December 2025) the company received 2,276 search-warrant information requests, 303 subpoenas, 33 court orders and another 3,013 information-preservation requests.Of those, Ring shared content (video, audio or other) for 1,077 of the requests and other data in 1,535 instances. Of those, only 653 Ring camera users were notified.

In October of 2025, Ring announced a partnership with Flock Safety, a company that sells license-plate scanning devices and software. Ring has not specified when the partnership will go into effect, but it has said device owners will only have their footage shared if they volunteer it — the sharing of footage would be one-way, both companies have said.

Google Nest also tracks law enforcement information requests, but after 2019 it stopped publishing a transparency report limited just to Nest. It now folds that data into its general report for all Google products.

In the case of Ms. Guthrie, who did not pay for a Google Nest subscription, historical footage would probably have been stored only on a server, or across several servers, somewhere in one of Google’s data centers. It is possible that law enforcement was able to access it using a warrant or without one, as per their terms, since the case could be considered an exigent circumstance.

Can I limit how my data is used and shared?

In their guide to securing your security cameras, Wirecutter points out that beyond the manufacturers themselves, people should worry about hackers or stalkers accessing their camera footage. When possible, they advise, enable two-factor authorization and end-to-end encryption (if available), use unique passwords and disable access to accounts that allow shared access.

Less common, but still concerning, are cases where a security camera company or its employees access your data. To prevent that, you can enable end-to-end encryption, which restricts viewing only to the owner of the video on a specifically authorized device. The downside of doing this is that you often forfeit features of the device; on Ring, this includes shared user access to video, A.I. video search, 24/7 recording, and live view from mobile devices, among others.

Neither Nest nor Ring has yet responded to a request for comment.

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