ABI Research examined Google’s Nest Cam and found that when users turn off the camera, only the LED lights go out and other components continue to run in the background.
Google 's Nest Cam is a camera utility that can either stream live feeds or store footage in the cloud. It's a modern, sophisticated IoT device that has been heavily promoted by Google in recent years.
According to the research conducted by the ABI Research team, each time users disable the camera, its electrical consumption drops only a few mA (milliAmps), a fact that indicates that only the LED light has stopped working and that the sensors and camera functions continue to operate normally.
These functions include the ability to monitor the environment by detecting motion or sound signals.
«This means that even when the consumer believes they have successfully disabled this camera, the device continues to operate, a fact that could potentially cause a wave of concerns regarding privacy.», said Jim Mielke, Vice President of Teardowns at ABI Research.
A Google spokesperson responded to ABI's accusations via The Security Ledger and clarified some confusing parts of the research.
The company’s spokesperson stated that the camera indeed continues to operate after shutdown, but the audio and video processing and its recording features are indeed disabled.
The power consumption observed by ABI Research is due to the fact that the camera is waiting to be reactivated at any moment and remains constantly in standby mode.
While Google 's explanation makes "technical" sense, it brings to mind another recent privacy scandal the company was involved in. The case involved the "OK Google" voice search feature that was secretly added to Linux versions of its Chromium browser.
However, to be fair, ABI Research did not monitor the traffic to check whether the camera actually uploaded anything to the cloud, a fact that would be, anyway, useless, given that recording the camera's motion uses one of the most difficult types of encryption.
