Videos From Wearable Cameras Contain Natural Biometric Markers That Can Eliminate Anonymity
from the motion-pictures dept
Video evidence figures quite frequently here on Techdirt, because moving pictures of incidents are generally compelling and incontrovertible. That's true even if they are released anonymously to protect the person recording the event from retribution. But new research suggests that videos from wearable cameras have embedded within them natural biometric markers (via New Scientist):Egocentric cameras are being worn by an increasing number of users, among them many security forces worldwide. GoPro cameras already penetrated the mass market, and Google Glass may follow soon. As head-worn cameras do not capture the face and body of the wearer, it may seem that the anonymity of the wearer can be preserved even when the video is publicly distributed. We show that motion features in egocentric video provide biometric information, and the identity of the user can be determined quite reliably from a few seconds of video.The paper describing the work also points out some consequences of this result:
Egocentric video biometrics can prevent theft of wearable cameras by locking the camera when worn by people other than the owner. In video sharing services, this Biometric measure can help to locate automatically all videos shot by the same user. An important message in this paper is that people should be aware that sharing egocentric video will compromise their anonymity.On the plus side, this also means that videos from police body-cameras can also be tied to particular officers, which may help to make such evidence less vulnerable to tampering.
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Filed Under: anonymity, biometric, body cameras, wearable cameras
