Efficient privacy preserving video surveillance

Widespread use of surveillance cameras in offices and other business establishments, pose a significant threat to the privacy of the employees and visitors. The challenge of introducing privacy and security in such a practical surveillance system has been stifled by the enormous computational and communication overhead required by the solutions. In this paper, we propose an efficient framework to carry out privacy preserving surveillance. We split each frame into a set of random images. Each image by itself does not convey any meaningful information about the original frame, while collectively, they retain all the information. Our solution is derived from a secret sharing scheme based on the Chinese Remainder Theorem, suitably adapted to image data. Our method enables distributed secure processing and storage, while retaining the ability to reconstruct the original data in case of a legal requirement. The system installed in an office like environment can effectively detect and track people, or solve similar surveillance tasks. Our proposed paradigm is highly efficient compared to Secure Multiparty Computation, making privacy preserving surveillance, practical.