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Ask HN: Any way to resolve Google Takeout errors?

1 points by cameronh90 ↗ HN
I know this is sort of a weird question to post to HN, but I am getting absolutely nowhere with Google support and the issue is extremely urgent.

In summary, there was a suspected murder on my road and they haven't found the body. Police have asked for all of the footage from my Nest camera over a period of about a week, but the Google Home app doesn't allow any way to export footage unless it corresponds to a specific event.

Every time I try Google Takeout, it fails with the error: "Something went wrong and we couldn’t create a copy of your Google data. You can try to create a new export."

I have been bounced around like 4 different support teams within Google to ultimately be told the Nest team don't know how to support Google Takeout and that Google Takeout doesn't have a support team, and that Nest currently offers no way to export footage unless it's associated with an event.

Clearly choosing a Google product was an enormous mistake that I won't be making again, but does anyone know of any way to get this footage out? Each day I lose is one day closer to when it automatically deletes...

3 comments

[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 17.5 ms ] thread
cowsup
Your best course of action is to tell your police agency what you told us, and have them take the steps towards giving Google a subpoena for the footage from your account for the period requested. That subpoena will make Google liable if they fail to deliver it prior to its deletion, and make this no longer your problem.
nness
The cynic in me wants to say that you could be very concise with the language you choose to use when communicating with law enforcement. You are not obligated to hand-over the footage, but I can understand your willingness to assist. My concern is that, now that you know your footage may contain evidence, or if it does actually contain evidence (which you may not know is material to their investigation), then if they believe you are withholding it intentionally, you might be accused of evidence tampering.

I'd not volunteer any further information until they reach out to you again, then I would say something to the affect of "I am unable to provide this footage as, to the best of my knowledge, I do not know to extent to which it exists and do not know how to it can be retrieved. This information is with Google."

cameronh90
This is in the UK so there's not usually a hostile relationship between the police and the general citizenry, so I'm not worried about this coming back on me. The police are already aware that I've been trying to retrieve the footage from Google with limited success so far and I've provided the most relevant sections via mobile phone screen recording.

My main interest in trying to get this footage is that there's been a crime and the person responsible ought to be prosecuted.

I'm planning to let them know that the only way forward may be for them to subpoena Google directly. The likelihood is that they won't be able to get that done in time before the footage expires. Under resourcing, budget cuts, etc. I'm also not sure they have enough evidence to make a subpoena under normal circumstances, but perhaps because I've given them permission, that means it's not relevant?

In any case though, Google Takeout not working is still an issue. Isn't Takeout Google's answer to the legal responsibility to provide the user with data upon request due to GDPR?