Stephen Schenck / Android Authority
TL;DR The FBI recovered Nest doorbell footage in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, even though there was no active Google Home Premium subscription on the camera.
Google’s documentation says non-subscribers only get about three hours of event history, raising questions about how the video was still accessible.
The case has sparked privacy concerns about how long Nest camera data may exist in Google’s backend systems.
The FBI has released surveillance footage recovered from a Nest doorbell camera in the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie, the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie. While the footage has certainly shed new light on the case and is an important piece of evidence, it’s raising privacy concerns among Nest camera and Google Home users about how the company stores their video recordings.
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As the grainy video showing a masked individual approaching Guthrie’s front door was released on Tuesday, privacy advocates and users have been questioning how the footage was accessed by law enforcement.
According to the FBI, the clip was recovered from “residual data located in backend systems,” despite previous statements that there was no accessible video because the camera had been disconnected and Guthrie did not have an active subscription.
A Google Home Premium subscription is required for both event-based and 24/7 video recording, and since Guthrie didn’t have one, the footage the FBI was able to access shouldn’t have technically existed.
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