IC Realtime CEO Matt Sailor contributed expert commentary with NBC Business KNTV Bay Area on how “residual footage” may still exist in the cloud even when a homeowner does not have an active subscription or user access to recordings. Watch the full segment below:
The NBC Business & Tech feature focused on a question that has surfaced repeatedly in high-profile investigations: how video can be obtained from a Nest (or similar) camera when the account holder is not paying for a recording plan. The reporting framed the retrieval as notable precisely because the typical consumer expectation is simple—no subscription means no video.
Sailor’s commentary addressed that gap between expectation and reality by distinguishing between what a subscriber can view and what may still be retained elsewhere. In the segment, he noted that without a subscription, the user or subscriber generally does not have access to recorded video through the usual app workflow.
His explanation introduced the concept of “residual footage,” describing it as a small amount of video that may persist even when a paid plan is not enabled. He characterized this as industry-common behavior, where limited footage may still be stored in the cloud.
The practical implication is that “no subscription” does not necessarily equate to “no data exists.” Depending on a platform’s handling of uploads, buffering, and retention rules, some portion of video may remain available for a time—separate from the access granted to an end user.
The segment also underscored a broader privacy reality: cameras can be “watching” in ways that aren’t always obvious to consumers, especially when storage and access are governed by backend policies that differ from what the user sees in an app.
In that context, Sailor’s contribution served as technical clarification rather than speculation about any single case. The focus remained on how cloud-connected cameras can create different outcomes for user visibility versus investigative or platform-level retrieval.
For homeowners and property stakeholders, the takeaway is operational and evergreen: understanding the difference between user access, subscription features, and platform retention behavior is essential for setting accurate expectations about both privacy and evidence availability.