Feasibility Study on CCTV-aware Routing and Navigation for Privacy, Anonymity, and Safety. Jyvaskyla -- Case-study of the First City to Benefit from CCTV-aware Technology. (Preprint)

TL;DR

This study explores the feasibility of CCTV-aware routing to enhance privacy and safety, revealing significant privacy risks and increased travel distances when avoiding high-performance cameras in Jyvaskyla.

Contribution

It introduces a novel CCTV-aware routing approach, mapping cameras and modeling coverage to evaluate privacy-preserving routes in an urban environment.

Findings

Privacy-preserving routes can significantly increase travel distance.

High-performance CCTV coverage can eliminate privacy-preserving routes.

Mapping CCTV coverage is feasible and reveals privacy risks.

Abstract

In order to withstand the ever-increasing invasion of privacy by CCTV cameras and technologies, on par CCTV-aware solutions must exist that provide privacy, safety, and cybersecurity features. We argue that a first important step towards such CCTV-aware solutions must be a mapping system that provides both privacy and safety routing and navigation options. To the best of our knowledge, there are no mapping nor navigation systems that support privacy and safety routing options. In this paper, we explore the feasibility of a CCTV-aware routing and navigation solution. The aim of this feasibility exploration is to understand what are the main impacts of CCTV on privacy, and what are the challenges and benefits to building such technology. We evaluate our approach on seven (7) pedestrian walking routes within the downtown area of the city of Jyvaskyla, Finland. We first map a total of 450 CCTV cameras, and then experiment with routing and navigation under several different configurations to coarsely model the possible cameras' parameters and coverage from the real-world. We report two main results. First, our preliminary findings support the overall feasibility of our approach. Second, the results also reveal a data-driven worrying reality for persons wishing to preserve their privacy/anonymity as their main living choice. When modelling cameras at their low performance end, a privacy-preserving route has on average a 1.5x distance increase when compared to generic routing. When modelling cameras at their medium-to-high performance end, a privacy-preserving route has on average a 5.0x distance increase, while in some cases there are no privacy-preserving routes possible at all. These results further support and encourage both global mapping of CCTV cameras and refinements to camera modelling and underlying technology.