Welcome to the digital panopticon, where the doorbell doesn’t just chime—it testifies. Jamie Siminoff, the man who successfully convinced millions of people to pay a monthly subscription to do the FBI’s job for them, is currently on what the New York Times calls an “explanation tour.” It’s less of a “tour” and more of a corporate retreat into the land of plausible deniability.

Siminoff’s latest epiphany? The “Search Party” ad—which featured blue rings radiating from homes like a WiFi-enabled plague—was a bit “triggering.” Apparently, the problem wasn’t the realization that your neighborhood has more cameras than a Vegas casino; it was just the color palette. If only those rings had been a soothing shade of “Privacy-Is-Dead Lavender,” we’d all be resting easy.

The boldest claim coming out of the Ring camp is that the backlash was a graphic design failure. It’s a classic Silicon Valley move: when caught building a dystopian infrastructure, blame the UI. Siminoff suggests that by removing maps from future ads, the “triggering” feeling will vanish. It’s the object permanence theory of civil liberties—if we don’t see the map of the surveillance state on our TV screens, surely the surveillance state itself has stopped existing.

But let’s talk about the “Search Party” feature itself. Ring’s assumption is that we’re all just dying to be amateur detectives, deputized by Amazon to scour our footage for “suspicious activity.” It’s not “mass surveillance” if it’s “community engagement,” right? Wrong. By rebranding neighbors as a literal search party, Ring is just gamifying the act of snitching on the delivery driver for walking across the grass.

The article argues that Ring is “avoiding the bigger questions” about AI-powered technology and law enforcement access. But let’s be real: Ring isn’t avoiding the questions; they’re just waiting for us to get bored of asking them. As of 2023, Ring has partnerships with over 2,500 police departments across the United States. That’s not a “mistake in an ad”; that’s a business model. While Siminoff pretends the issue is a “triggering” graphic, the reality is that the “Neighbors” app has turned every suburban cul-de-sac into a data-mining operation for local precincts.

We love to criticize the “potential” for Ring’s network to be turned into a surveillance tool, as if it hasn’t already happened. We’re already living in the era of “Warrantless Requests,” where police can ask for your footage without a judge’s signature, and Amazon—until very recently—could hand it over under “emergency” circumstances.

The irony is thick enough to clog a smart lock. We buy these cameras for “peace of mind,” yet the constant stream of notifications about a “suspicious person” (usually a teenager looking for a lost cat) has turned us into the most paranoid generation in history. Siminoff’s “explanation tour” is just a way to put a friendly face on the fact that Amazon knows exactly when you take out the trash, and so does the precinct three towns over.

So, go ahead, Jamie. Take the maps out of the ads. Change the blue rings to pink hearts. It doesn’t change the fact that the “Search Party” is already inside the house, and we’re the ones who invited it in for a monthly fee. Just don’t call it surveillance—call it “Smart Home Security,” and we’ll keep clicking “Accept” on the Terms of Service.