Do privacy enhancing technologies have an Achilles Heel?
I want to return to the claim that “security versus privacy is a false dichotomy” made by Dr. Ann Cavoukian in her Seven Principles (see last week’s blog). The reason: I am beginning to think that this dichotomy is alive and well and the Principle that asserts a “false dichotomy” is wrong. I want to explore this issue in the context of CCTV cameras but I think the problem I raise could apply to many Privacy Enhancing Technologies or Privacy by Design solutions, so much so, that the issue needs a fuller analysis. In a recent speech made by Dr. Cavoukian, she noted that at the University of Toronto, Professor Kostas Plataniotis and Karl Martin have developed a privacy-enhancing approach to video surveillance cameras. Their work, as described in “Privacy Protected Surveillance Using Secure Visual Object Coding”, uses cryptographic techniques to secure a private object (a face/image), so that it may only be viewed by designated persons. Their technique means that objects of interest (e.g.
