Nancy Guthrie, 84, was kidnapped in early February from her home in Tucson, Arizona. Blood matching his DNA was found on the porch, and ransom demands were sent to several media outlets. Her daughter, Savannah Guthrie, a well-known figure on American television, is desperate and the affair immediately generated strong media coverage, matching the family’s notoriety.
A highly publicized disappearance
For several days, the authorities explained that a major obstacle was slowing down the investigation: the camera attached to the front door had been “disconnected” shortly before the disappearance. The Pima County Sheriff had clarified that, due to lack of an active subscription to the service associated with the device, no video had been preserved.
Then, a dramatic turn of events. FBI Director Kash Patel released black and white images showing an armed individual, masked and gloved, approaching the door on the morning of the incident. In one photo, he appears to be handling an object resembling a plant; on another, he begins to dismantle the Nest camera installed near the entrance.
These images, he explained, were recovered from “ residual data located in back-end systems “. In other words: fragments stored on remote servers, even though the device was supposed to be offline. Why did you wait several days before making these elements public? This could be a classic strategy in police circles: trying to discreetly identify the person filmed before releasing the images to the public.
The camera in question belongs to the Nest range, owned by Google since 2014. Like most connected doorbells, it does not have significant internal storage: the sequences are generally sent to data centers, in the United States or elsewhere.
Google’s privacy policy states that a camera can continue to transmit images to its servers, including when the user does not see a clear indicator on the screen. Above all, the data does not disappear instantly. Without a subscription, they may be automatically deleted after a certain period of time. But if law enforcement intervenes before deletion, it is sometimes possible to recover these “residue”.
According to many user agreements, companies can transmit data to authorities with a warrant… but exceptions exist. In some cases, the data collected legally belongs to the company, not the camera owner. Which represents serious implications in terms of privacy, even if in this specific case, it is first and foremost a question of collecting as much information as possible to find the missing person.
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