Police Grab Lost Home‑Cam Footage: How the FBI Got the Video

The mystery of Nancy Guthrie’s disappearance has taken a new turn when police finally accessed the video from her doorbell camera, which was earlier declared lost. The FBI released footage showing a masked figure near the house on Tuesday. Earlier, officials said the camera had been taken off its post and was no longer connected to a paid plan when Nancy vanished on Feb. 1. The device stopped recording, and any captured motion was wiped out because it wasn’t backed up to a subscription. Sheriff Chris Nanos explained that the camera’s software detected movement half an hour after she was reported missing, but without a subscription the data would normally be erased. He emphasized that investigators were still working on it. FBI Director Kash Patel later claimed the clip was “recovered from residual data located in backend systems, ” though he offered no details on how the recovery happened.Experts suggest that if a camera is physically removed, it loses power and stops recording, but the footage already saved may survive longer because it isn’t overwritten. Jim Jones from George Mason University noted that a power cut simply freezes the existing data. Without a subscription, Google Nest cameras still send recordings to the cloud, but once the company notices no paid plan, it may move that data to a lower‑priority storage or delete it to free space. Jones said this could eventually erase the footage, and NPR has reached out to Google for clarification. Deleting data in the U. S. is largely left to the company’s discretion under loose privacy laws, according to Jaron Mink of Arizona State University. Policies dictate how long data is kept, but the system isn’t always designed to erase it immediately. If a company overwrites old data, it is permanently lost. Leeza Garber of Drexel University warned that while some firms refuse to hand over user data, others may comply if law enforcement obtains a warrant. Garber urged tech users to read terms of service carefully and understand that their data can be accessed by authorities.