Wednesday
May282008
More Cool Privacy Tech
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 at 1:39PM
The new privacy technology we are working on at 3VR does more than simply blur people's faces. Here is an example where full images of surveilled people are actually scrambled and encrypted before they are displayed for monitoring security personnel.
The image on the left is from the original video feed. The second image is from a scrambled and encrypted version of that same feed.
Though with the encrypted feed it's possible to detect loitering, fighting, and many other behaviors of concern, identity information is totally protected...that is, until an authorized user chooses to decrypt the feed. BUT then that action is controlled and logged, and an alert can even be generated, to ensure that the surveillance system is not being abused or misused.
The image on the left is from the original video feed. The second image is from a scrambled and encrypted version of that same feed.Though with the encrypted feed it's possible to detect loitering, fighting, and many other behaviors of concern, identity information is totally protected...that is, until an authorized user chooses to decrypt the feed. BUT then that action is controlled and logged, and an alert can even be generated, to ensure that the surveillance system is not being abused or misused.
Reader Comments (11)
>Test Video Sequence: courtesy of http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/rbf/CAVIARDATA1/
>I would like a solid color like red instead of scrambled pixels. Because if it is a tiny object on background with similar color, I can easily overlook it...
>I bet that's really useful for when one guy steals some shit, and you have to go find him.
"Now where did that medium-sized prismacolor guy go?"
>If you use a solid color then that would mean there would be a redundant copy maintained where the original video is stored. and wastage of storage space
>Because federal agencies are SCRAMBLING to protect privacy! /sarcasm
Good for the private sector, although I don't fear the private sector like I fear my government.
>And, they are going to use that as a cover to put cameras in areas where they never did before (i.e. changing rooms and restrooms). Just as they use technology that sees through clothing in airports and then say it is only viewed by "authorized personnel."
>A bad idea. Cameras are not just used to indicate loiterers. Sometimes you need to see what the person is carrying, their demeanor based on their facial expression, and what their description is in order to pass it to other security personnel. Having to decrypt this data before the information is available is an unnecessary abstraction from the goal of security.
>Secure : To lock down and immobilize
Security is the opposite of freedom. The problem is that death is also the opposite of freedom and if we have bad people killing other people then none of us really have any freedom at all. I suggest that all of us get used to the idea that privacy does not exist whenever others are effected. Being in public is a consent to let everyone see everything that you are doing.
Glorybe: That is YOUR definition of "privacy".
I suggest that is sophistry: sounds reasonable, but on reflection, it is not. I suggest "privacy" = right to be left alone.
It ignores realism to think that anyone, other than an ultrawealthy recluse like the late Howard Hughes, has any choice but to go about in public. By your definition, with all the cameras to make those people, who are afraid of "freedom" to "feel safe", you are declaring no one has the human right to be left alone by others. Being left alone cannot include constant monitoring by "authorized" people, however one presumes such people to be all with absent ill-intentions. You are using the language of what psychiatriasts might characterize as "Starting Gate Prosecutors"...all of whom believe they know what all the rest of us are and are not supposed to do. "Freedom" never meant, or can mean, "safe". Those are contradictions. Hence, "Give me liberty or give me death" made all the sense in the world to the brave people who founded this country. They did not operate from a fear-based paradigm, as you apparently do.
A fairer description: Claiming people have "consented" to give up a fundamental freedom by going about in public is akin to declaring something like "by living you have consented to (something the declarer wants to be, in order to make himself/herself, safer). Which among us has the right to make such a declaration for all of us? The majority has no right to take fundamental freedoms from everyone, just to "feel" safe. Fear-based living is corrosive.....but wonderful for the security industry and authoritarian rule.
"Now where did that medium-sized prismacolor guy go?" <<< so true