Table of Contents
The Video Surveillance Privacy Dilemma
What does the law say?
The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) of the European Union, the PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act) of Canada, and the CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act) of the United States are some generally recommended prominent laws in this field. The purpose of these acts is to protect individuals and the “data that describes them” and to ensure the responsibility of its usage.
The GDPR mandates that organizations indulging in the collection of descriptive data (such as surveillance footage) must protect it against “unauthorized or unlawful processing, accidental loss, destruction or damage.”
The first is valid for any form of video surveillance. Recorded footage contains images of people that can be used to identify them directly or indirectly. This qualifies the recorded information as “personal data”.
The second is more specific to Computer Vision AI. Here, the recorded information is passing through comparatively more nodes (for analysis, storage, processing, distribution, etc.), raising additional concerns about personal information getting intercepted across the points.
This dilemma forms the groundwork for our discussion today. But before we look at the solution, let’s take a quick peek at how the law interprets these apprehensions.
In simpler words …
Private companies do have the right to monitor their employees with the camera, especially when employee safety is at stake. However, employers are required to notify employees in the range of the cameras of the property being under video surveillance. However, such surveillance must not include audio and may not be used in locations where it is reasonable to expect privacy.
Since many of these laws come with big punitive consequences, ensuring privacy is no longer an add-on feature. To be able to properly leverage video surveillance for HSE compliance management, it becomes imperative to balance it with individual privacy.
Security vs Privacy
Privacy in our case means a worker’s immunity from footage-based identification, and security refers to protection from the footage getting into the wrong hands, through a breach, leak, or cyber-attack.
Even the safest systems around are at perpetual risk of data breaches. Since notifications and acknowledgments do not cover data breaches, any compromise on data security is an inevitable compromise on user privacy as well.
It is therefore important to ensure that in case data does get leaked, it is encrypted, encoded, or structured to preserve the privacy of stakeholders. This concept is known as “privacy by design”. We at Detect have endorsed it at the very core of our design, ensuring our systems are built around privacy rather than as an extension.
The Concept of privacy by Design
Ensuring Privacy
For video surveillance specifically, privacy redaction or blurring solutions solve a considerable proportion of the problem. The most important, efficient, and practical approach is that of privacy masking. A privacy mask either hides or anonymizes a part of the video (mostly identifiable information like region, face, or body), to help prevent unwarranted exposure.
Traditionally (and commonly) privacy masking has been static in nature, where the mask blocks defined areas in the live video feed. Since the mask is burned into all camera video streams, this type of masking is permanent.
Dynamic masking, on the other hand, blurs or anonymizes identifiable features of the workers. Everything else in the video frame or image can be seen and monitored as usual. It ensures identities are protected, while still allowing operators to see what’s happening in the video footage. Since it completely removes people’s identities from the masked video stream, the identity is secured not only during authorized processing but also in the event of a breach.
Ensuring Security
Masking identifiable information from surveillance footage is just one part of the story, securing it is also equally important. More than 22 billion records were exposed because of data breaches in 2021, costing the industry more than 4.35 million dollars in direct costs. We at Detect Technologies endorse the importance of networks, tools, and software architected around privacy for information protection.
Standard certifications like ISO 27001 are universally accepted assessments denoting the quality of an organization’s ISMS. In addition to being a hallmark of best information security practices adorning our closet, it is a guarantee that you can trust Detect Technologies with your data.
Before you leave
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