Just making a notation that even though the video wasn’t supposed to be recorded and kept, Google actually does record and keep these videos. AND, even though its private video, the government can easily enough obtain it (did they even need or get a search warrant?)
Since no one is bothered by this, I await when the next, not so dramatic, case comes up. Then the next one, and next one, until eventually relatively mundane events will more routinely have ‘unrecorded’ video recovered without any concern.
After all…who would oppose police and FBI from getting this video from a kidnapping case; or a rape case; or a murder case; or an armed robbery case; or an assault and battery case; or a felony drug case; or a burglary case; or a trespassing case; or a disturbing the peace case….
The government has always had the power to gather evidence of crimes. It would be a worse society if it did not.
That power needs to be checked by an independent judiciary. If it is not, that is the problem: either the lack an independent judiciary or the lack of checks by it.
And the population has always had the right to put forward evidence of crimes.
Can you say more? All I see is that “the video was recovered from residual data located in backend systems.” Nothing about whether they asked permission to access those systems, or from whom, or whether they needed a warrant. Where are you seeing the specifics in this case that should alarm us?
I’m not saying we shouldn’t be alarmed; I just haven’t seen the specifics.
I’m not sure about this camera, but some security cameras have the ability to record to an internal SD card in addition to doing cloud recording. Even if you don’t have a subscription, you can typically set the camera to just record on the internal card. If you need the video, you can use the camera’s app to connect to the cam or remove the card and view the video on your computer.
First, I don’t know if the did obtain a warrant or even needed to. I’m mostly just noting that no one is opposed to the mechanism where this video was captured and provided in this case (how could we be oppose to it? the good outweighs the bad). Is there any crime, or even activity where you think Google and law enforcement shouldn’t have access to such video? Its particularly interesting that while Nancy did not have the subscription to record and save video…..Google did anyway.
It’s not about the crime or activity, it’s about the process. They shouldn’t have access to the video unless they have either permission of the video’s owner or a warrant. Even with one or both of these, there are circumstances where I’m leery of their having them; but this is the bare minimum. Are you suggesting that they had neither in this case, or are you suggesting that even though they had permission or a warrant, it’s still skeevy?
Well, the Good Left couldn’t outweigh the Big Fat right. Here we are.
What I meant was, on the whole technology helps us in so many ways. I can’t imagine how we ever got anywhere or a pizza delivery as recently as the early 2000s.
We’ve opened Pandoras box with this.
We have to take the bad with the good and mitigate where we can.
Exercising my paranoia* here: this is why I won’t have those kinds of camera doorbells, or smart speakers, etc. in my house. The putative convenience is far outweighed, for me, by the virtually guaranteed invasion of privacy, which I (have to) assume is what you are talking about. Why did Google or someone save this video when (possibly or probably) not requested to do so? The answer is because it can.
Yes, of course, there are already invasive technologies that I can’t avoid. But I don’t have to invite extra ones into my home.
It’s possible that, even though she wasn’t paying for video storage, the video is cached for a short time or that it was marked for deletion but was able to be recovered.
Yes, and I don’t know where you get this “no one is bothered by this”. I am. They didn’t ask me.
Now talking about a door camera alone, there are a lot of reasons I don’t want anyone to have access to that video. And everyone should agree.
But in the land where people pay their own money to have internet connected cameras in their living rooms, bedrooms, whatever, what can I say? Stupid people gotta stupid. If you want everyone in the world, not just Big Brother, having the ability to watch you watch TV in your underwear picking your nose or stroking one off to pron, then congratulations, when you added inside cameras, you live in that world.
You say you don’t care? Who is going to watch you? I got news for you. A lot of people!
This is why I have no problem with this. In this case, the owner is the victim here, and unable to grant permission. I would hope, if my own life were at stake, someone could pull up video that might help.
In the case of a warrant, those require a compelling reason to be presented to a judge, who will either deny or grant the request. In this case, granting a warrant was the right thing.
The way data is usually “deleted” is it doesn’t actually delete it, it just marks that portion of storage as available to write over. Until something actually overwrites it, the data still exists and can be recovered fairly trivially.
Since the footage in question would have been among the most recent things recorded by the camera, it might just be as simple as this. No invasion of privacy or lies from Google, just data storage working the way it has since hard drives were invented.
Presumably it’s like everything else in the legal world; someone’s got to sue, and it’ll get hashed out in court and the decisions made at that point. Or Congress/state legislatures will pass laws clarifying it.
What I read was happening is that originally they couldn’t get video because Ms. Guthrie wasn’t a subscriber, but then subsequently found that Google does indeed record and store video anyway, and that while it gets overwritten eventually, in this case it hadn’t been overwritten yet, so was available.
Now I’m sure they just went to Google and said “Hey- give us that video.” and Google said Ok.
But the questions are why they’re recording it in the first place for non-subscribers, who owns that video, and whether or not they need subpoenas or warrants to obtain it.
Personally I’m less freaked out that Google just coughed it up or that law enforcement asked for it than I am that Google is just recording video for no good reason. That, to me is the big problem here. There’s a lot of potential data gathering that companies can do that we have little way of detecting without going on a rather deep-ish dive technically. I mean, I’m sure I can figure out how, but it’s not quick or easy to tell everything my phone has sent to Google, for example, and most people don’t have the technical background I do. They could very easily be (and probably are) logging all sorts of stuff that most people wouldn’t like them recording, but we just don’t know, and legally it’s not clear if that data is ours or theirs. This doorbell cam is no different.
Thanks @Dewey_Finn for asking this question and @Miller for the response - this is what I was thinking, but could not have asked the question better, and the response confirms my suspicions (not knowing how the technology works).
Right. I don’t think anyone’s privacy was violated. On the other hand, I have no idea if Google required a warrant before it located and recovered the video.
Yes!
I mean, if a loved one were to go missing, kidnapped, I would freak out if those who hold relevant data would be out there stonewalling the FBI with warrant demands. I appreciate that the government can’t force you to give something up without a warrant, but nothing stops Google from giving up the data willingly, and they should in a case like this.
The problem is that this lady’s doorbell is recording and storing activity without her permission. Nest has a lot of products including indoor cameras, wi-fi, all sorts of stuff, what else do they record without permission?
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