Trustworthy Video Surveillance: An Approach Based on Guaranteeing Data Privacy

Abstract

Thousands of video files are stored in surveillance databases. Pictures of individuals are considered personal data and, thus, their disclosure must be prevented. Although video surveillance is done for the sake of security, the privacy of individuals could be endangered if the proper measures are not taken. In this chapter we claim that a video-surveillance system could protect our safety and, at the same time, guarantee our privacy. Most literature on privacy in video surveillance systems concentrates on the goal of detecting faces and other regions of interest, and in proposing different methods to protect them. However, the trustworthiness of those systems and, by extension, of the privacy they provide are neglected. Hence, we define the concept of Trustworthy Video Surveillance System (T-VSS), which tackles the issue of protecting the privacy of the individuals. In this chapter, we assess the techniques proposed in the literature according to their suitability in a T-VSS. Moreover, we describe a privacy-aware video-surveillance platform that fulfils those properties and we detail all its components. We have implemented and tested the proposed platform to show the feasibility of our proposal.