Blurring video for privacy

This seems like a good idea. [Link]

Cities and corporations are stringing up thousands and thousands of surveillance cameras, armed with advanced video intelligence algorithms, to watch out for terrorists and crooks. Too bad the rest of us get caught on tape, while the electronic eyes make their spy sweeps. And no one knows what the spycams are recording.

A strain of new software may have the potential to change that, however, by blurring or encrypting faces in the footage, until there's an alarm or an investigation. Ironically, some of the same firms that made video surveillance extra Orwellian are now working to make the spy networks a bit more privacy-friendly.

Take video-analysis company 3VR. Its software builds up databases of every vehicle, license plate and face a surveillance network sees -- yikes -- and triggers an alarm when a suspect person or car crosses a camera's lens.

Now, 3VR's engineers are tweaking the algorithms to blur out all the faces and vehicles that don't fall under the software's suspicions so the rest of us aren't filmed just because we happen to be walking by the wrong place at the wrong time.