Why is it necessary to blur faces on CCTV?
The increasing amount of video footage being captured in daily life is giving rise to serious privacy concerns in many sectors. As a result, the anonymisation of CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) video is becoming even more important, with video redaction software providing the best option for many organisations.
What is face blurring and why is it necessary?
The UK alone has around 1.85 million CCTV cameras, and it has been estimated that the average British citizen is caught on camera 70 times a day. It is unsurprising that not everyone is happy about that, especially if the footage was shared or made public.
Video redaction software is used to blur faces in all types of video. This is to comply with data legislation such as GDPR that specifically state that personal data must be blurred and protected for individual privacy.
Compliance is of course vital, but as awareness around privacy grows, so does customer demand for prioritising data protection across all areas of business. Privacy is affecting how customers trust a business, and tools such as video redaction is an extremely useful way to encourage and ensure customer trust in data practices.
Redaction does not take away from the ability to learn from video data
Personal data may be removed from the video, but the potential for visual data is still abundant. With the help of metadata and video analytics that can be overlaid on top of the anonymised video, CCTV footage can be useful to understand more about the environment being surveyed, the people traffic, and how to better protect assets and improve efficiency.
How is video redaction achieved?
Secure Redact is used for CCTV to remove personal information from video footage, making it safer to distribute or use for wider sharing. During post-processing or in real-time, our solution (that can be used via SaaS or APIs) is powered by computer vision and artificial intelligence to find and protect sensitive information.
By masking private information from CCTV footage, automated video redaction software helps businesses cut costs, deal with data compliance, and maximise the potential of video.