By Nicole Nguyen
Most people get security cameras for, well, security. They hope the devices will deter criminals, or at least catch bad guys in the act. But fundamental privacy questions, like what happens to the videos and who owns the footage, should be part of the calculus when installing the devices.
Just consider these two recent events:
Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of "Today" co-anchor Savannah Guthrie, had a Google Nest camera, but not a subscription to view older recordings. Yet law enforcement still managed to access and share a clip. Some Nest owners were surprised to learn that, yep, even if you aren't paying for cloud storage, your recordings could still be floating around Google servers.
Then, there was Ring's Super Bowl ad for Search Party, a new feature that can analyze footage from cameras around your neighborhood to help find a missing dog. It's a sweet idea, but some people couldn't shake the creep factor. Wait, Ring's default settings allow it to tap into my personal recordings? Could it be used for more than just a wayward puppy?
Most home-security camera makers, such as Google and Amazon, which owns Ring, have access to your footage -- and, when legally compelled, can share it with law enforcement. Some readers have told me the peace of mind is worth the privacy trade-off. Others are disturbed by their videos being viewed by anybody but them.
Your digital paper trail
A growing share of households -- currently 30% of U.S. residences with internet access -- own a security camera or video doorbell, according to data from research firm Parks Associates. They capture all sorts of activity, from roaming wildlife to delivery drivers dropping off packages, to potential criminal activity.
Shortly after Nancy Guthrie's disappearance from her home in Arizona, local authorities said software had detected a person on the door camera but there was no video available, because "they had no subscription." Then, days later, law enforcement released the video with a Nest watermark.
I, too, own a Google Nest camera without a subscription. I can only review 10-second motion clips from the last six hours. If I want more, I need to pay $10 monthly for 30 days of history, or $20 for 60 days.
But even if you pay nothing for storage, Google still uploads your Nest clips and keeps them, at least for a time. Google says video is deleted from the cloud "after a certain number of days," but doesn't specify how long.
In the Guthrie case, authorities said the video was "recovered from residual data located in backend systems." Google didn't comment on its involvement.
"Residual data" was a head-scratcher to me. Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley who focuses on digital forensics, explained that when you delete a photo on your phone, it may no longer be visible to you, but it's still stored on the phone's disk. The same goes for security-camera footage on a server.
Forensic software can help recover the files, Farid said, with a caveat: "The longer you wait, the less likely you are to find it, because the computer will eventually reclaim that memory."
However the data was salvaged, the fact remains: Google and other security-camera makers such as Arlo and Ring have access to your videos -- sometimes after you don't. The data may be encrypted to fend off hackers, but the companies can decrypt and, if presented with a warrant, share it.
Google reports the number of legal requests it receives every six months.
There's an alternative. End-to-end encryption can hide videos from even the companies hosting the data. In this case, only the camera owner has the key to decrypt the recordings. Ring has an opt-in end-to-end encryption feature for select camera models. Nest and Arlo do not. For devices that work with Apple's HomeKit Secure Video, full encryption is the default.
End-to-end encryption comes with its own compromises -- with Ring, you give up twenty-plus features, such as video search, when you turn it on. Apple's system also limits footage to 1080p, even if the camera supports higher resolution.
Neighborhood watch
Ring's Search Party can leverage the company's large network of outdoor cameras and use AI to help reunite missing dogs with their humans. But some humans bristled after seeing a recent TV ad for the feature.
"The minute they showed the zoom out of all the cameras syncing to scan for a target, my heart sank to my stomach and I was filled with dread," one commenter wrote on the YouTube video.
At a time when federal agencies are using facial recognition and other technology to speed up arrests, the concern is understandable. It's not a leap to imagine millions of coordinated video doorbells being used for a similar purpose.
Jamie Siminoff, who founded Ring and heads the Amazon subsidiary, said that's a misunderstanding of the feature. It's built specifically for dogs right now, he said, "because with all of these other use cases, there are unintended consequences we want to think about."
He noted that Search Party has located one dog per day, on average, since launching last fall. If your Ring device spots Fido, you have the option to share the footage with the owner -- or not.
But would the feature ever extend beyond canines? Cats, surely -- the company is working on locating other pets. And in October, Siminoff told us, "There are thousands of people missing with dementia all the time, so you can imagine looking for them."
I asked about the company's partnership with Flock Safety -- which was announced in October to facilitate local law enforcement requests for footage from Ring users, who can share videos if they want. Flock also works with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Siminoff said Ring hasn't integrated with Flock yet, "and we have zero integration with ICE."
Search Party alerts are turned on by default for Ring subscribers in the U.S. You can disable the feature by going to the menu, then Control Center.
In our quest to catch the neighborhood porch pirate, we've inadvertently built a dragnet that catches much more. Until end-to-end encryption becomes the industry standard, we are recording -- and potentially sharing -- a digital history. Our data floats in the cloud, until a warrant brings it back to earth.
Write to Nicole Nguyen at nicole.nguyen@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
February 12, 2026 14:23 ET (19:23 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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