The other explanations here don't explain the long delay between the start of the investigation and the release of the footage. Yes, storing customer data is what we'd expect from Google and yes, the FBI can coerce Google to provide this data for their investigations. But it does not take a week for Google to find a file on their servers.
My hunch is that Google initially tried to play dumb to avoid compliance, as to not reveal they do in fact retain customer data. They had a plausible excuse as well -- the owner had no subscription so they don't store the data -- and took a gamble that this explanation would suffice until the situation resolved itself. I suspect that authorities initially took Google's excuse at face value, since they parroted this explanation to the public as well. As pressure mounted on authorities to make some headway on the case, they likely formally exercised whatever legal mechanisms they have at their disposal to force Google's hand, and only then was the footage released.
Why are we overthinking this? It was disconnected by the kidnapper, not erased by him. All the FBI has to do is reconnect it (or even just find the MAC address) and wait for Google to provide them the footage via a request.
https://policies.google.com/terms/information-requests?hl=en...
The article even says "[...] some Nest devices record event histories and store them on-device. The third-gen wired Nest Doorbell can save up to 10 seconds of clips, while the first and second-gen wired doorbells can save up to three hours of event history, all without a subscription.".
I heard that Nancy Guthrie was not paying for the subscription that let her view her old video footage. So it's interesting that Google was still storing all that footage.
The google/ring backbone service people are likely disconnected from google's money collecting people. It is probably just easier to collect all of it and then check for payments only when users login to get at the footage. Otherwise, every fetch of footage from a camera would trigger a query to the payment system.
If I don't pay, they should not store footage. What is so difficult about that?
Most of these cloud connected cameras always stream footage through their cloud service, regardless of whether you pay for a subscription. Because people don't know how to configure port forwarding, etc, in their firewall.
They're not architecturally delivering the video a different way if you pay than if you don't. They're just changing the retention period.
This video was probably recovered from cache somewhere.
There was an article the other day called something like "How is Google helping the investigation?"
It said she didn't have a cloud subscription, but that there are data pipelines that make these sort of devices work. (Imagine there's a thumbnail of the video in the product somewhere, so there's a pipeline that takes a video stream and generates thumbnails.)
According to the article, it was a matter of having someone figure out which pipelines her videos might have touched, and then go looking to see if there were any ephemeral artifacts that hadn't been lost yet.
saw this cnn article that discusses a similar theory. it was unclear to me whether the source of the article is purely speculation.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/10/tech/google-video-nancy-guthr... and archived at https://archive.ph/oZyRM
> Most of these cloud connected cameras always stream footage through their cloud service, regardless of whether you pay for a subscription. Because people don't know how to configure port forwarding, etc, in their firewall.
No consumer product should have users do port-forwarding or punch holes in the firewall. You don't want an IoT device on your network accepting packets from the internet.
The proper way to do this is with a cloud server arbitrating connections, which is what a lot of products do.
The reason most consumers want cloud storage isn't for ease of access, though. It's because they want the footage stored securely somewhere. If the thief can just pick up your camera and walk away with the evidence, it's not very useful to you.
Some (ironically the cheap Chinese ones) use UDP hole punching for a P2P connection. Assumedly because it saves server costs.
> Should you get rid of your Nest camera over privacy concerns?
Absolutely, and you shouldn't have bought and installed this garbage in the first place. Their primary purpose is not to protect you but to spy on you for Google's benefit, much like the rest of their dis-services (email, cloud storage, mobile operating systems).
If you absolutely need surveillance cameras for your safety, use generic IP cameras connected to your own NVR (network video recorder), possibly with Frigate for offline AI processing and notifications. Nothing should ever leave your network; the data should be encrypted and only shared with the police when it is in your interest.
> Their primary purpose is not to protect you but to spy on you
Here I was thinking the primary purpose was to see who's at the door and check if Doordash and packages have been delivered. We've also used them to "spy" on our cats to be sure they're using the litter box while on vacation, and even to "spy" on wildlife in our backyard.
Not everything needs to be a conspiracy. These devices are useful and practical and have value.
Also, lest it get lost in the chorus of voices telling us to throw these things out: the actual news here is that the device appears to have provided an actual evidentiary lead in the investigation of an actual (and horrifying) crime. That has value too, even if kidnappings are rare.
The problem is that your advice doesn't work for 99% of the customer base. Go the average person "if you absolutely need surveillance cameras for your safety, use generic IP cameras connected to your own NVR (network video recorder), possibly with Frigate for offline AI processing and notifications." and see what they say. It's important to remember if you are on this site you are an extreme minority and the average person isn't even aware enough to think about these things, let alone set up their own offline AI video processor.
Fair point, but security cameras, despite their name, do very little for your security as evidenced by the news. Most people don't need one, and only have Rings/Nests and other similar spyware because of a combination of fearmongering, aggressive marketing, and pricing subsidized by data collection (spyware). If you truly fear for your safety, you should purchase a shotgun, not a Nest camera.
In any case, when you don't have the skills required to do something, you can hire someone who does. I pay a plumber because I don't have plumbing skills and tools, so it's not unreasonable to pay someone to set up a local camera system for you if you want one.
Cameras do more than just that kind of security.
Our camera has been of great use. In fact has largely made us money. We had an incident where a fire truck damaged our car in the street with its hose. We thought a kid with a bat did the damage at first. The camera though showed the real culprit. When we told the fire department they denied it and said there were no firetrucks in the area. We sent the video footage and then they sent a city lawyer with a checkbook.
This reminds me of when people were surprised that Alexa devices listen all the time. Yes, cloud connected device is uploading data to the cloud. That is not very scandalous or interesting. The FBI didn't burn zero days to do this, they simply asked Google for it.
> This reminds me of when people were surprised that Alexa devices listen all the time
Alexa devices are not recording audio and uploading it all to the cloud all the time.
Nest cameras are designed to upload recordings to the cloud, even without subscription. It's literally one of the selling points.
The CBC report yesterday on tv mentioned the awkward phrase the it was recovered “buried deep in servers” and I thought it was bizarre.
Replay available on YouTube. CBC the national.
This is correct. It has to be buried below the frost line else we would have frozen footage.
The guy did seem to be wearing a warm coat and gloves so obviously pretty cold where the video was, probably just below the frost line.
They ultimately found it sandwiched between the videos of epstein uncut jail cell footage and Jan 6's lost video exhibits.
Nest cameras upload video clips to the cloud without an active subscription.
This fact is explained right in the Google support page linked by this article
> *The 3 hours of event video previews is available without a Google Home Premium subscription for the Nest Cam (battery) and Nest Doorbell (battery).
All of these articles trying to spin this as some surprise revelation are getting old.
Because online journalism is journalism jr. and they can't be bothered to do basic research on their story.
anecdotally i've had this conversation with 3 people (engineers) at my work today.
They all thought it was crazy that without a subscription they're recording and uploading video.
One person asked 'Why are we paying for a subscription if it's not for the storage and processing?'
Another started talking about flock and ice right after.
When the Nest camera was reconnected, the camera uploaded all the cached footage. Google then handed the footage to the FBI, no warrants needed as it's part of an ongoing case and Google is usually pretty friendly with the government (and vice ver-sa)
>> no warrants needed as it's part of an ongoing case ...
Thats a rather chilling interpretation of the law. Every case is ongoing until trial.
The Nest footage is conclusive and unambiguous.
Nancy Guthrie was apprehended by ICE agents and deported to Australia.
=======
Customs agent: “G‘day sir. Have you got a criminal record?”
Irishman: “M‘Lord, no! I didn’t realise that one was still required!”
I'm fairly certain that Nest cameras do not allow streaming over your local network.
You can still use the cameras even without a subscription, i.e. watch the live stream or get notifications. This means that yes, they are absolutely uploading data to the cloud and storing it for some undetermined window. Paying for a subscription seems to just give you access to that history.
Don't they have a battery backup and a local buffer before uploading? It probably had its last footage still stored locally, using the remnants of power in its internal battery.
She apparently didn't have a subscription so it shouldn't have been uploading anywhere... however things get murky with notification settings.
Normally we would expect no subscription means no video uploaded, but it doesn't HAVE to mean that. IF you distill it, it really only means the Ring doorbell owner doesn't get access to any video or features without paying.
There's no reason they, however, won't still derive value from it without a subscription by recording and reselling that data somehow. That's probably how they got this footage. All the subscription does it help subsidize their surveillance network and let you use it a little bit.
I guess I don't have to renew my Ring subscription then. If things go awry I can just ask FBI to ask Amazon for the footage.
Sure, if whatever case you need Ring camera footage for is important enough to get FBI involved.
Distill it?
Eh, it's not a terrible usage. I give it 7/10 for artistic license.
It's a pretty darn normal usage:
Even if it isn't uploading, the hardware must have local storage. It may be small and persistently overwritten, but if the power was severed, then the last data on that drive would be the last thing written before the power was cut.
The hardware was uploading even without a subscription.
A lot of these cameras don't store anything locally unless you add an SD card, which die all the time.
I thought they just give you reduced storage on the free tier? If so, then its obvious that it is still uploading motion related events.
If it was still uploading events then why did it take so long to recover?
The camera was supposedly disconnected fwiw
> She apparently didn't have a subscription so it shouldn't have been uploading anywhere..
Nest cameras upload event footage even without a subscription.
It's not a secret. It's a selling point for the devices.
Or... yet another full-on spying device. Like all phones, like all modern TVs, smart speakers/home systems, cars, anything electronic capable of recording its environment is doing it, for the sole purpose of uploading it to be stored and analyzed.
There are some limits of course but they are mostly technological, but this ain't some notification trickle but full pictures when you expect zero, zilch, nothing.
I'd never install such device at home, added value is dubious at best for my family life and this is exactly the type of shit I would expect to be happening in it, regardless of brand or country of origin. If it connects it sends. Its sad state of things in 2026 but thats reality right now.
>If it connects it sends.
More broadly, if it connects, it will serve other masters besides you.
The Nest doorbell wasn't set to save recordings, so how did the FBI get it?
I'm not familiar with Nest, if you don't have a subscription to store video, and someone rings your doorbell, and you take 5 seconds to bring it up in the app, can you scroll back and see those 5 seconds? Or is it literally a feed from the camera to the app over bluetooth? Probably not. The video stream probably gets sent to some backend system and, while she didn't pay for storage, it probably persists for a few hours to days in cache.
Not set to save recordings likely means "saved in a memory buffer and never given a file handle", that is how most consumer recording devices that offer limited playback work.
I recently had to attempt to piece together dash cam footage from my wife's car in the same way when she witnessed an accident but the file had been "aged out".
The video was likely recovered from local flash memory on the camera itself. These kinds of devices are not uploading raw video to the cloud.
There are several reasons for that. The first is that you cannot rely on connectivity 100% of the time. Second, if you can have the camera run image processing and compression locally, you don't have to dedicate a massive amount of processing resources at the data center to run the processing. Imagine ten or a hundred million cameras. Where would you want the image processing to run? Right.
My guess is that they either went to Google to perhaps connect the camera to a sandboxed testing rig that could extract locally-stored video data or they removed the flash device, offloaded the raw data and then extracted video from that data. This last option could also have the advantage of having less compression (architecture dependent).
Decades ago I was personally involved in recovering and helping analyze surveillance video data for the prosecution in the OJ Simpson case. Back then, it was tape.
One of the techniques that was considered (I can't publicly state what was actually done) was to digitize raw data right off the read heads on the VCR's spinning drum. You could then process this data using advanced algorithms which could produce better results than the electronics in even the most expensive professional tape players of he era.
Once you step away from the limitations of a product --meaning, you are not engineering a product, you are mining for information-- all kinds of interesting and creative out-of-the-box opportunities present themselves.