The external hard drive had been smuggled from Syrian regime territory through extremist-held towns and into Turkey. When Ghazwan Koronful finally got his hands on it, he sighed in relief. Loaded onto the disk were pictures of thousands of title deeds from towns in central Syria recently recaptured by regume troops and largely emptied of their residents. Fearing Syrias regime would expropriate abandoned properties or tamper with deeds, a network of activists and lawyers set their covert plan into motion, said an Agence France Presse report on Wednesday. "It was our most complex operation yet," said Koronful, a 65-year-old Syrian lawyer who heads the network from Turkey, where he has lived in exile since 2012. For nearly five years, Koronfuls Free Syrian Lawyers (FSL) have been working to preserve property deeds and other civil paperwork in Syrias opposition areas. They enter town registries, photograph the documents, carefully log and organize them, then smuggle the hard drives across Syrias sealed northern border into Turkey. "In total, weve got eight terabytes of documents, about 1.7 million documents -- court records, wills, birth, marriage, and death certificates," said Koronful. Among them are up to 450,000 land-related documents from northern and central Syria -- title deeds, contracts, and other papers that displaced Syrians could use to prove property ownership. These documents are crucial now, Koronful explained, as the regime passes a series of laws that rights defenders fear may unfairly dispossess Syrians from their homes. "Our work simultaneously protects against hostilities that could damage the deeds, and against the regimes attempts through these new laws to tamper with peoples properties," he told AFP. "Those files represent the hope of return." FSL sprang into action after Homs citys registry was destroyed in a fire in 2013, which activists suspected was a regime bid to strip oppositionists of their land. Smuggling out original deeds from other towns was risky and could be considered tampering, so the FSLs 15 lawyers opted for the next best thing: digital copies. With help from civil society group The Day After, they traveled to Turkey to learn how to handle, photograph and archive documents. Back in Syria, they began working through abandoned registries in northern rebel towns: Harem, Azaz, Saraqeb. "We set up a little studio in the room with the most light," said an FSL lawyer still in Syria who identified himself as Samer. With just four Canon digital cameras, two laptops, flashes, and tripods, they photographed thousands of deeds, making sure names and dates were clearly visible. "As soon as wed finish one 200-page ledger, wed upload the SD card onto the computer. Meanwhile, the camera didnt stop. Wed put a new card in and start photographing again," Samer, 43, told AFP. Each month, they emptied their computers onto external drives which they sent to Koronful in Turkey. They raced against air strikes that damaged cameras and wounded staff members, worrying registries would be bombed to pieces before they could finish. "When we reached the last page, wed be so happy to be finished. Whatever happens now, if we get bombed, we have a drive with everything on it," said Samer. Sometimes they lost the race. In 2013, days before FSL was to begin photographing deeds in the northern town of Al-Bab, the ISIS group swept in and destroyed the registry, Koronful said. They now struggle to get permission to enter registries from suspicious rebels, especially in Idlib, occasionally photographing in secret. Since Syrias war erupted in 2011, more than six million people have been internally displaced and another five million have fled the country. More than 920,000 have been displaced this year alone, the UN said, the fastest rate yet in the seven-year war. A vast majority leave behind property-related papers, the Norwegian Refugee Council found in polls last year, according to AFP. That puts them at risk of losing access to their land through decrees like Law 10, which allows for property expropriation for urban development. Koronful fears the regime could also dispossess refugees through legislation on re-issuing damaged deeds. A set of laws allows for missing titles to be restituted using digital copies, but it remains unclear if the regime would accept a version produced by opposition-affiliated lawyers. "Were expecting a lot of people to ask for copies," said The Day Afters Amr Shannan, pointing to similar post-conflict property disputes in Lebanon and Bosnia as precedents. For now, the digital titles remain tucked away on a pair of hard drives, one in Turkey and another in an undisclosed European city. They arent yet searchable, but are archived in the same order as the originals. "If theres going to be a return of refugees, one of the most important factors is that they have homes or land to return to," said Shannan.