Video Surveillance: Privacy Issues and Legal Compliance

Pervasive usage of video surveillance is rapidly increasing in developed countries. Continuous security threats to public safety demand use of such systems. Contemporary video surveillance systems offer advanced functionalities which threaten the privacy of those recorded in the video. There is a need to balance the usage of video surveillance against its negative impact on privacy.

This chapter aims to highlight the privacy issues in video surveillance and provides a model to help identify the privacy requirements in a video surveillance system. The authors make a step in the direction of investigating the existing legal infrastructure for ensuring privacy in video surveillance and suggest guidelines in order to help those who want to deploy video surveillance while least compromising the privacy of people and complying with legal infrastructure.