SHOULD we modify our conception of privacy thanks to the seemingly unstoppable spread of CCTV surveillance networks? Jack Brassil thinks so. He鈥檚 a computer scientist at Hewlett-Packard鈥檚 laboratory in Princeton, New Jersey, who is testing a technology called Cloak that aims to limit the extent of privacy invasions. 鈥淩ather than prohibit surveillance, our system seeks to discourage surveillers distributing video without the authorisation of the surveilled,鈥� he says.
Cloak has two key requirements. First, CCTV users, such as municipal councils and businesses, would have to sign up to a system that electronically obscures the faces of people who do not want their pictures to be published in video footage that is passed to others. The list of such people would be akin to the national 鈥渄o-not-dial鈥� lists designed to prevent cold-calling, Brassil says.
Second, the person opting in to Cloak needs to carry a 鈥減rivacy enabling device鈥� 鈥� most conveniently a phone with GPS capability. This wirelessly beams the user鈥檚 position and velocity to a central server which forwards the data to the CCTV鈥檚 control centre. Image processing software then uses the subject鈥檚 trajectory to identify and obscure their face in the CCTV footage if it is to be distributed. In Hewlett-Packard鈥檚 simulations, the technology is workable, even in dense crowds.
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The idea raises broad societal and legal questions, however. 鈥淚 don鈥檛 think its objectives are right at all,鈥� says privacy analyst Ian Brown of the Oxford Internet Institute in the UK. 鈥淧eople shouldn鈥檛 have to opt in to get privacy protection. And this system actively invades your privacy because it tells the service where you are at all times.鈥�
Brassil concedes that his proposed solution may not suit everyone, but says the important point is the discussion of privacy. Brown also notes that there are transatlantic legal differences to contend with. In Europe, data protection laws prevent surveillance videos being passed on while only a few states in the US have such legislation. He says another way forward is to encourage engineers to design privacy into technologies from the start.
Brown will have his work cut out, says Brassil, who is to publish his work as part of a book on video surveillance later this year. 鈥淭echnology is advancing far faster than our ability to understand its privacy implications,鈥� he says.
鈥淭echnology is advancing far faster than our ability to understand its privacy implications鈥�
