April 25, 2008

Privacy Protected Surveillance Using Secure Visual Object Coding

[From Intergovworld.com More privacy-boosting technology begets more video surveillance]

Developed by Karl Martin and Kostas Plataniotis, researchers at the faculty of engineering, their secure visual object coding application uses cryptography techniques to encrypt "objects of interest" within video frames -B faces or other features that may be used to identify a person - and store them separately. In order to view the original complete image, a decryption key is needed to restore the object of interest.

The project web site by Karl Martin shows a number of pictures of the process at work. The idea here is to encrypt either faces or complete bodies as a way to protect privacy. For example, surveillance could be monitored in real-time but faces would be obscured. However, this is reversible if a decryption key is used.

The PET application is an add-on designed to work with a front-end video surveillance system that has object detection capabilities. "Facial detection has been around for a long time to varying degrees of performance. Many vendors already offer it in consumer applications like digital cameras so you can focus on faces when taking photos."

They are currently working on implementing their system with the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC).

Posted by rshah at 07:36 PM | Comments (0)

April 15, 2008

Sensors in Buildings

[From 'Big brother' buildings offer less invasive security - tech - 09 April 2008 - New Scientist Tech]

An interesting article on the use of small cheap motion detectors within buildings. They can be used as an alternative to cameras in some areas, because they are cheaper and less invasive from a privacy standpoint. It is suggested that this technique could be used for security monitoring.

Here is a nice video of the system, Ambient Intelligence for Better Buildings (link to Journal article)

Posted by rshah at 01:54 PM | Comments (2)