Building a Privacy-Preserving Smart Camera System

TL;DR

This paper introduces CaCTUs, a privacy-preserving smart camera system that empowers users with control over their data through cryptographic protocols, enabling secure live streaming at acceptable latency and quality.

Contribution

The paper presents CaCTUs, a novel system that maintains user control over video data using cryptography, supporting features like sharing and deleting without relying on untrusted third parties.

Findings

Supports live streaming with 2s latency at 10fps and 480p resolution

Enables user-controlled access to private video data

Demonstrates feasibility of privacy-preserving smart cameras

Abstract

Millions of consumers depend on smart camera systems to remotely monitor their homes and businesses. However, the architecture and design of popular commercial systems require users to relinquish control of their data to untrusted third parties, such as service providers (e.g., the cloud). Third parties therefore can (and in some instances have) access the video footage without the users' knowledge or consent -- violating the core tenet of user privacy. In this paper, we present CaCTUs, a privacy-preserving smart Camera system Controlled Totally by Users. CaCTUs returns control to the user; the root of trust begins with the user and is maintained through a series of cryptographic protocols, designed to support popular features, such as sharing, deleting, and viewing videos live. We show that the system can support live streaming with a latency of 2s at a frame rate of 10fps and a resolution of 480p. In so doing, we demonstrate that it is feasible to implement a performant smart-camera system that leverages the convenience of a cloud-based model while retaining the ability to control access to (private) data.