The surge in personal and sensitive information being exposed due to the unprotected sharing of face images and videos on social networks is concerning. While the advance of video technology offers many benefits, it also raises privacy concerns, as personal information in videos can be exposed and misused.
In this stance, video privacy software is developed to address these concerns by protecting privacy compliance software for video data. Thus, methods like blurring faces and, most importantly, AI-based anonymization (Egonymization), become critical for safeguarding against privacy violations.
Learn more about what video anonymization is, how it works, its applications in various industries, and how they can help companies protect data privacy and secure sensitive information here!
Video anonymization is a technique used to protect sensitive information in videos by blurring, removing, or replacing the identities of individuals featured in the footage. This helps companies sanitize information and safeguard privacy by permanently obscuring sensitive details and personal identities.
Under European data protection laws like GDPR and FADP, companies have to delete personal data on a regular basis once the purpose of the data is accomplished. But, what if there are other options your companies can do? Instead of deleting those data, you can anonymize the data and store it longer with video anonymization.
By applying video anonymization, companies take a significant step toward meeting privacy regulations and compliance standards, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is a law designed to safeguard the personal data of individuals in the EU. This regulation ensures that businesses handle their data responsibly. Additionally, it also grants individuals control over their personal data, including decisions about what kind of and under what circumstances information can be shared.
GDPR allows individuals to request the deletion of their personal data within a specified timeframe. To comply with GDPR, companies must first locate any references to the individual in their videos or documents, and then eliminate any Personally Identifiable Information (PII).
Meanwhile, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) is a privacy law enacted in California to enhance consumer protection and privacy rights. Similar to the GDPR, it gives individuals greater control over their personal information and imposes obligations on businesses regarding data handling practices.
According to GDPR and CCPA, personal data is any information that can directly or indirectly identify an individual. This includes not only written data like names or addresses but also visual data like faces and other identifiable features captured in videos.
With the best video anonymization software, companies can obscure sensitive information and ensure that the personal identity of individuals cannot be revealed through the footage.
Basically, these regulations require that personal data should be handled with care. Therefore, GDPR-compliant video anonymization tools are needed to help companies meet these legal requirements by reducing the risk of unauthorized access and maintaining individual privacy.
When selecting effective video anonymization software, companies need to focus on features that ensure both privacy protection and regulatory compliance, while, of course, still maintaining high levels of performance.
Remember! An advanced video anonymization tool should be capable of accurately identifying sensitive information and offering scalable solutions that can handle large datasets.
If you need help with how to define essential features that a video anonymization software should have, learn some lists below!
1. High Accuracy and Scalability
Whether processing a single video or thousands of hours of footage, the best video anonymization software must maintain high levels of accuracy. However, on the other hand, scalability is equally important, especially for organizations in sectors that handle large volumes of video data on a daily basis, such as research, technology, security firms, or media companies, or data centers. With the best and most scalable video anonymization software, companies can anonymize large batches of video data efficiently.
2. AI and Machine Learning Integration
The use of AI and machine learning technologies significantly enhances the effectiveness of video anonymization software. Why? The answer is that AI-driven systems are able to recognize and detect faces, objects, and patterns in the footage with precision, even in complex environments with multiple subjects or varying lighting conditions.
Meanwhile, machine learning algorithms can continually improve over time by learning from new data, ensuring that the anonymization process becomes more accurate and adaptive.
3. Regulatory Compliance
The best video anonymization software for privacy compliance must meet strict privacy laws like the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) and CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act), which mandate that companies should safeguard personal data, including identifiable information captured in video footage, such as faces, license plates, and other distinguishing features.
But, how to know whether or not they comply with such a mandate? Here’s a guide to help you evaluate the regulatory compliance of any video privacy software:
Figure: Some anonymization techniques; original, blurring, redaction, and egonymization.
When choosing the best video anonymization software for privacy compliance, it's important to consider how each method impacts privacy, the quality of the footage, and the specific needs of your application.
Here’s an overview of common video anonymization techniques with their limitations and advanced capabilities:
Pixelation is the process of replacing identifiable features in video footage with a mosaic of colored squares. In general, pixelation is effective in scenarios where the primary goal is to prevent the identification of individuals or objects without significantly altering the overall context of the footage.
However, according to a study conducted by Sabrina C. Triess, et al. (2024) about the anonymization of industrial video data in feature preservation, pixelation proves inadequate as an anonymization technique that preserves essential features, as it results in data lacking the clarity needed for precise pose estimation and still exposing sensitive privacy details.
Another significant drawback is that pixelation removes valuable attributes like demographics and sentiment, which making the anonymized video less useful for new applications.
The silhouette method is done by rendering identifiable subjects in video footage as dark or light outlines, creating a shape or shadow that obscures specific details. This technique keeps the general form of the subject visible while hiding finer details that could reveal personal identity.
According to Pascal Birnstill's study "User Study on Anonymization Techniques for Smart Video Surveillance" (2015), both silhouette and pixelation methods are regarded as providing superior privacy protection. However, they come with increased operational challenges.
Drawbacks of Silhouette Anonymization: Silhouette anonymization, while effective in obscuring identifiable features, often complicates the analysis of human actions and poses. Researchers and analysts may also struggle to interpret behaviors or movements accurately. Also, the abstraction of subjects into silhouettes can lead to a loss of context in the video since important visual cues that help in understanding interactions or situational dynamics may be obscured.
Blurring is a technique that involves applying a blur effect to obscure specific areas of a video. This method is done by reducing the sharpness and clarity of the identifiable features and making them unrecognizable. That’s why it is commonly used in security footage and public cameras.
There are two types of blurring methods available; gray blurring and color blurring.
However, by implementing this method, some important contextual information may be rendered unrecognizable, thus lead to misinterpretation of events and complicating the analysis of human actions and interactions. Most importantly, the visual quality of the footage can be negatively impacted by blurring which may potentially distract viewers from important events occurring in the background.
Synthetic face replacement is the method of replacing real faces in video footage with computer-generated and artificial faces that do not correspond to real individuals (egonymization).
This advanced technique uses machine learning and AI to create realistic-looking but fictitious faces, ensuring that no actual person can be identified from the footage while still preserving all the valuable data attributes like demographics and emotions.
Among other methods, this synthetic face replacement provides a high level of privacy and is particularly useful in sensitive applications such as medical research, where maintaining patient anonymity is essential.
Here are some of the benefits you can get by using the best video anonymization software for privacy compliance:
Face anonymization software helps companies ensure that sensitive personal data or the privacy of individuals captured in the footage is effectively obscured.
By anonymizing video content, companies can mitigate the risks of unauthorized access or misuse of personal information before spreading the content for security, monitoring, marketing, or other purposes.
For example, a hospital that uses video surveillance to monitor patient areas or staff activities is constantly collecting video footage that may include sensitive data. In such a case, they would need GDPR-compliant video anonymization tools to ensure that any identifiable information in the footage is obscured, especially when the footage will be used for analyzing hospital operations, training medical staff, or other marketing needs.
By using the best video anonymization software for privacy compliance, companies can use the data for business growth while staying within the boundaries of GDPR and CCPA compliance. With anonymized data, companies can share video footage with partners, vendors, or regulatory bodies without risking exposure to personal information.
GDPR imposes fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover or €20 million, whichever is higher, for non-compliance. Similarly, CCPA violations can result in fines of up to $7,500 per violation.
Thus, by using video anonymization tools, companies can avoid these significant financial penalties by ensuring that they comply with the regulations when handling personal data and reduce the risk of of legal battles and further liabilities.
Video surveillance has long been essential for ensuring safety and security across various environments. Yet, as our digital landscape evolves, the need for advanced solutions like video anonymization becomes increasingly clear.
To align with current and future ethical data handling practices and legal standards, companies need to choose the right video anonymization software that has both effective surveillance and strict adherence to privacy laws.
At Egonym, we are committed to providing the best AI solutions that automatically anonymize people's faces so that organizations and researchers may utilize visual data without compromising privacy as we uphold the highest standards of ethical data management.
With Egonym, you can get the best video anonymization software that complies with relevant data protection regulations and is scalable to any volume of video footage you need. Explore More to know our AI video anonymization solutions and how we can help your company adhere to privacy compliance.