A user study on anonymization techniques for smart video surveillance

A key mechanism of privacy-aware smart video surveillance is anonymization of video data. We conducted a user study with a response of 103 participants in order to investigate which pixel operations are suitable for protecting persons' identities while, at the same time, allowing a human operator to recognize persons' activities i.e., preserving the utility of the video data. Regarding the activities in the data set, namely stealing, fighting, and dropping a bag, our data does not approve the common hypothesis that privacy and utility of video data are necessarily trade-off.