Want to Know How to Recover Deleted Photos and Video from Your Devices?

Last week, the story of parents who had their baby seized by police went viral. Video shows Sacramento Police Department officers entering the home of Anna and Alex Nikolayev without a warrant, saying they were going to "grab" the baby and advising the parents not to resist or fight. The Russian couple's lawyer though believes law enforcement and child protective services overstepped their bounds.

Now imagine how difficult this portion of the case could be without video evidence. Imagine if the video and pictures of police taking the baby away were deleted.

(Photo: Shutterstock.com)

Carlos Miller, who runs the Photography Is Not a Crime blog, has had content on his recording equipment deleted a couple times by law enforcement, he believes. And he has a message for those who have had pictures or video deleted by cops or accidentally by themselves: "It doesn't completely disappear."

In fact, Miller last year was acquitted from all charges after he was able to recover deleted video showing he was not resisting arrest or breaking any other laws. He is now trying to obtain enough evidence to bring a case against the Miami-Dade Police Department and the individual he believes wrongfully took his camera and deleted its content.

Everything Miller learned about recovering deleted images and video was self-taught from the Web and with the help from a tech friend. The most important thing to know, he said, is to not take any more photos or video if you believe your content has been deleted.

"Once you realize that video has been deleted, put your camera aside and figure out a way to recover it," he said.

There are programs that can help you recover such content. Pictures are easier to get back than video due to the size.

For photos stored on Miller's Sandisk memory card, the program recommended, which he used to recover them, was RescuePro. Video, which was recovered using PhotoRec, was a bit trickier because it took longer to sift through all the recovered content to find the appropriate portions.

Just recently Alex Heid with Federal Jack and HackMiami went through this process when his own video, which was deleted allegedly by Miami police upon his arrest. He details in this video how he recovered his footage:

Even better than going through the recovery process though is to not put yourself in a situation where your footage could be deleted in the first place. The easiest way to protect against this is to password protect your phone, which is the device Miller said the average citizen would likely be using to film or take pictures these days.

Another recommendation Miller had was to consider using an app that would automatically begin transferring pictures and video into cloud storage. On a PINAC forum is a discussion on just these types of programs.

One user with an Android phone suggests Bambuser and Dropbox.

"Dropbox will automatically upload video (or pictures) when off button is pushed or recording stopped. Just make sure the app is running in the background. Not live streaming, will only upload after recording stopped," rick wrote. "Bambuser is live streaming and will continue to record and upload even after off button is pushed. Unsent data is saved to phone and can be uploaded later to complete video record. As always, test these apps under different situations and know their ins and outs."

Dropbox, another user cautions though, won't upload video on iOS devices unless the user is connected to WiFi, but it will do so through a data package on Android.

So, whether you accidentally hit the trash button or if your photos and video were purposefully deleted, these are methods you can use to recover or preserve your data.

Miller's ultimate goal is to change a mentality he thinks some officers have when it comes to "creating their own truth."

"Cops have to rethink that they can't just create their own truth anymore," Miller said.

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Related:

• Cops Arrest Journalist at Occupy Miami ...and Allegedly His Video
• What You Need to Know About Filming, Photographing Cops

This story has been updated to correct that Miller believes he had his video deleted by the Miami-Dade Police Department and edited for clarification.