By Steven Kenny, Architect and Engineering Program Manager – EMEA at Axis Communications.
Surveillance and privacy are not natural bedfellows. But surveillance has a critical role to play when it comes to safety and security, so its use in public places is becoming more accepted as measures are taken to respect individual privacy.
While privacy has always been a priority in the surveillance industry, public awareness of data privacy rights has been heightened by initiatives like GDPR in Europe, FISMA in the US, the Data Protection Law in the UAE, the Personal Data Protection Law in Bahrain, the Protection of Personal Data Law in Qatar, the Personal Data Protection Law in Saudi Arabia, and so on.
As a result, organisations across sectors in the Middle East have had to take note and show how they are safeguarding privacy to not only protect their brand perception but also comply with regulations. All of this puts more pressure on organisations to secure their surveillance data.
Juggling vigilance and privacy: Safeguarding surveillance in the digital age
Surveillance cameras are a common sight in public places: it is believed that as of 2021, there were over a billion surveillance cameras in use across the globe. As a result, people tend to accept that they will be captured on camera regularly. The proliferation of network cameras puts the need to understand how all this data is processed and stored into perspective.
The UAE, for example, prioritises national security and has opted for surveillance through a diverse technology fleet. In practice, this means the country is believed to have one of the highest per-capita concentrations of surveillance cameras in the world, with more than 300,000 CCTV cameras installed at over 7,000 entities and public places to ensure safety in Abu Dhabi alone. In Dubai, more than 300,000 cameras monitor human activity around the clock, making it one of the safest cities on earth.
The organisations and government entities capturing the surveillance may do so for various reasons – from securing an area against criminal activities to ensuring traffic runs smoothly. Here, manufacturers and sellers of surveillance cameras are essential in helping users stay informed on surveillance best practices, especially in a fast-paced, high-technology environment such as the Middle East. This includes how to correctly and ethically use the information collected by surveillance cameras and how to help them take the necessary steps to comply with local and international privacy regulations.
Surveillance technology: A compliance tool for protecting privacy in the Middle East
While there are regional nuances in the exact wording of how organisations should comply with data security and surveillance regulation, essentially it is there to protect people’s human rights by safeguarding their right to privacy. Therefore, it puts in place controls that must be implemented around the capturing, storing, and sharing of video data. Several tools and technologies exist to protect people’s privacy during the process of viewing, recording, and exporting video. These tools have become even more efficient in recent years due to innovation in AI and analytics software, enabling new levels of privacy safeguarding. The most common methods are dynamic anonymisation, permanent masking, and redaction.
Dynamic anonymisation
This technique uses analytics software to automatically anonymise people in the video in real time as the analytics monitors the actions and movements in a scene. Should the identities of those captured in the footage be crucial to an investigation, only authorised personnel can unmask the data to access the video. With the success of Expo 2020 Dubai in mind, this kind of technology could be particularly useful during large-scale events because it protects individuals in their right to privacy and covers an organisation’s obligations to keep people safe – especially in open, public spaces.
Permanent masking
Permanent masking is a way to protect people’s privacy by anonymising everyone in a video. As a practical example of where permanent masking could be used, think along the lines of public events with a similar scale to last year’s FIFA World Cup hosted in Qatar where the identities of passers-by are irrelevant to the primary aim of the surveillance. Permanent masking can be done statically, where defined areas of a scene are permanently masked in live and recorded video, or dynamically, where masking is not static but dynamically applied to moving people and objects in a scene in live and recorded video.
Redaction
Redaction is the process of obscuring or removing identifying information from a video or image. This is often done to protect the privacy of those caught on camera. Thermal cameras are a type of non-visual surveillance technology that can be used for redaction. They work by detecting heat signatures, which can be used to identify people without revealing their faces.
A balancing act: Securing data and privacy It’s clear that organizations worldwide need to prioritize securing their video data while safeguarding privacy to comply with regulations and maintain their brand reputation. They are not only expected to educate themselves on best practices and cutting-edge technologies but also to ensure compliance with local and international privacy regulations. However, with the guidance and tools of industry leaders such as Axis, it becomes possible to strike a balance between vigilance and privacy. With responsible and conscientious surveillance practices, Middle Eastern organizations can demonstrate their commitment to protecting people’s data and maintaining a secure environment.
