Widespread video surveillance brings information management challenges
http://www.pcworld.com/article/129917/ibm_researchers_take_on_video_surveillance_privacy.html
Video surveillance is increasingly common in America and other parts of the world. While cameras may be monitored in real time, they generally record video which can be reviewed later. This article covers two issues relating to video surveillance: privacy and retrieval.
The fact that cameras can monitor and record the actions of law-abiding people, in public, raises privacy concerns. To protect privacy IBM wants to blur the faces of ‘innocent bystanders’ [1]. The challenge is incorporating this into a product whose primary purpose is recording details of people suspected of wrongdoing. The two possibilies discussed in the article are 1) to automatically identify suspicious behavior and retain intact video only in those cases or 2) to store both the degraded and intact video and have separate access controls during retrieval.
The second part of the article discusses the information retrieval capabilities of current systems. These systems can automatically add metadata to the recorded video. During indexing, the system adds tags describing the colors and size of objects in the scene. Few details are provided about how queries are handled. The one example given is investigators, looking for a suspect wearing red, searching for the word “Red” to retrieve all video containing that color.
Lecture:
MULTIMEDIA IR
METADATA FOR MULTIMEDIA
[1] Google recently began blurring faces in Street View:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9943140-7.html
John Honovich Said,
September 3, 2008 @ 1:10 am
While IBM’s claims are conceptually interesting, from a practical perspective, their video surveillance product offerings are not very competitive and attractive. In other words, it is a fascinating research project but not a good indicator of the current technologies and products used in production environments. I am an independent analysis running a dedicated information portal on video surveillance. I have a report about IBM on the site that you might find useful: http://ipvideomarket.info/report/exploring_ibm_video_analytics_smart_surveillance_system
Bookmarks about Surveillance Said,
December 31, 2008 @ 12:30 pm
[...] – bookmarked by 2 members originally found by hammerdrill5 on 2008-11-30 Widespread video surveillance brings information management challenges [...]
Mickael Francosa Said,
January 28, 2009 @ 9:05 am
Internationally, video surveillance is used generally for many different reasons. America spent substantially more money per capita than any other industrialized nation on video surveillance equipment.