You’re On Candid Camera

“When Nancy Guthrie went missing, officials said she had a doorbell camera, but that it had been forcibly removed, and she did not have a subscription. This meant there were no videos stored in the cloud. Ten days later, the FBI released footage from the camera, which was revealed to be a Nest Doorbell, clearly showing the masked suspect. This is a huge break in the case and highlights the value of security cameras in solving crimes, even if their deterrent effect remains largely unproven. But it raises privacy concerns around how this supposedly ‘lost’ footage was recovered.” Why ‘deleted’ doesn’t mean gone: How police recovered Nancy Guthrie’s doorbell footage. This is like so many of today’s surveillance-related stories. It’s really good that Google was able to track down images that could help solve a crime. It’s really scary that everything we do is being recorded to that great hard drive in the sky, whether we opt in or not.