Approaches to obfuscating biometric data for privacy reasons in a browser environment and surveillance systems for accomplishing the same

Abstract

Introduced here are surveillance systems and associated approaches for obfuscating biometric identifiers generated by, or available to, those surveillance systems for privacy reasons. In the event that a surveillance system generates a biometric identifier (e.g., by imaging a face of a person entering the premises of an organization), caution must be taken to only share the biometric identifier with individuals as necessary for security reasons. The approaches introduced here allow the privacy of persons being surveilled to be protected. Specifically, a computer program may selectively apply blurring as an impermanent mask to obfuscate each face in a digital image. This approach limits 'reidentification' of a given person to those scenarios where her identity must be determined.