How the Puppy Poop Police Threaten Our Privacy

It seems like such a good idea: You lose your dog Ziggy, and you might – but likely won’t – find him by nailing flyers to telephone poles and making social media posts. But with a massive national database of dog photos and a search image function powered by AI, you can save the day.

Another technology to find individual dogs comes from “snout recognition,” the canine version of facial recognition. This tech has dubious origins – blacklisted Chinese AI giant Megvii, which has been developing such canine facial-recognition technology (for snouts of all shapes) since 2019. 

A more common technology links poop to pups through DNA analysis of dog waste. One innovative company, PooPrints, caters to landlords and HOAs desperate to sniff out dog owners who don’t pick up after their pets. No joke: If you want to live at a swanky condominium along the Hudson in New Jersey, for example, you may be required to have your dog’s DNA swabbed and put on file. (If it can happen in Italy, it can happen here).

But there’s a flip side to these otherwise noble uses of detection/recognition technology – this isn’t really just about our pets. Though well-intentioned, these methodologies can be leveraged as yet another way to bypass our privacy expectations.

At least one published study recounts how canine DNA was used to convict four men of murder. All it took was a crime tip from a caller and some residual dog poop from the scene found on one of the perpetrator’s shoes. All other evidence was inconclusive, but the DNA analysis showed the odds of the sample coming from a different dog other than the one at the crime was 1 in 1.16 billion.

We’re all for analyzing DNA and snouts to solve such criminal cases, as the Fourth Amendment clearly permits. What’s concerning is the cavalier way in which something as deeply and uniquely ours as DNA – and now that of our pets – can be gathered, stored indefinitely, and misused without permission or legitimate purpose. Just add human and canine DNA to the thousands of other data points already purchased and warrantlessly accessed by federal agencies and stolen by bad actors. It's just one more knot in the ever-tightening surveillance net that surrounds us.

Remember that the next time you wonder whether to pick up Ziggy’s contribution at the dog park.

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