Anyone Drop a Camera in the Boston Public Garden Lagoon?

DriveSavers Data Recovery recovers mystery photos and videos from dead camera

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--(Photo Plus International Conference & Expo – Booth #1165) – DriveSavers Data Recovery, the worldwide leader in data recovery services, announced today that the company recovered images and videos from a corroded Kodak camera that was found in the Boston Public Garden Lagoon by Chicago Sun Times technology columnist and Techhive.com reporter, Andy Ihnatko.

“We are always ready for a data recovery challenge”

Over two years ago, a family visiting Boston’s Public Garden dropped their Kodak digital camera in the park’s lagoon. It wasn’t until recently that Andy Ihnatko spotted the shiny camera in the dry mud bed of the lagoon that the camera resurfaced. Every year, the lagoon at the Public Garden is drained for cleaning purposes. Ihnatko happened to be there in March when this occurred and stumbled upon the camera.

Being one who loves a challenge, Ihnatko attempted to recover the images with hopes of returning the camera back to its rightful owners. However, he was not successful. His next move was to contact the professionals and sent an email to DriveSavers Data Recovery that said, “Interested in a challenge?”

“We are always ready for a data recovery challenge,” said John Christopher, senior data recovery engineer at DriveSavers Data Recovery. “Every day we see extraordinary circumstances of data loss from charred hard drives to dog chewed memory cards to drowned RAID systems. Our engineers are trained and experienced to recover the unimaginable.”

The mystery camera’s memory card was sent to the company’s facilities in Novato, CA and delivered straight to its Certified ISO 5 cleanroom laboratory to extract the data. The engineers were able to successfully complete the recovery in a couple days. There were 140 photos and two videos recovered. The photos revealed that the camera belonged to a family who may have been visiting the area, but from where and when did they visit?

Ihnatko assumed the camera was lost some time before winter, before the frost and ice arrived. But, DriveSavers forensic team was able to determine that the last photograph taken was on June 24^th, 2010. That means the camera and memory card were under water for two years surviving two brutal winter seasons – frozen twice and thawed twice.

The next-to-last photo is of a little girl, seen from behind, who is sitting on the edge of a Swan Boat in the lagoon. The last picture is a blurry shot of one of those famous swans. Presumably, the girl or someone with her dropped the camera in the murky water at that moment. And there it sat for two years.

Ihnatko was eager to get the images back so he could start his search for the owners, but DriveSavers has strict privacy and security policies. Because the memory card was not officially Ihnatko’s, DriveSavers data security and privacy guidelines forbid the release of images that include faces of identifiable people. The company could only share a few photos that could be used to help locate the camera’s owner. So far no one has stepped forward.

To see the mystery photos in Ihnatko’s story on Techhive.com visit: http://www.techhive.com/article/2009054/the-camera-from-the-bottom-of-the-lagoon.html. If you know the owners or think you have related information, please contact DriveSavers at 800.440.1904. DriveSavers Data Recovery Advisors are available 24/7 to help answer any data recovery questions.

About DriveSavers Data Recovery

DriveSavers Data Recovery, the worldwide leader in data recovery, provides the fastest, most reliable and only certified secure data recovery service in the industry. All of the company’s services meet security protocols for financial, legal, corporate and healthcare industries and posts proof of its SOC 2 Type II audit report and HIPAA data security and privacy compliance. DriveSavers Data Recovery adheres to US Government security protocols, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Data Security Rule (GLBA), the Data-At-Rest mandate (DAR) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX). DriveSavers Data Recovery engineers are trained and certified in all leading encryption and forensics technologies and operate a Certified ISO 5 cleanroom. Satisfied customers include: Bank of America, Google, Lucasfilm, NASA, Harvard University, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, U.S. Army and Sandia National Laboratories.