Authenticating Lossy Surveillance Video

Public camera feeds are increasingly being opened to use by multiple authorities (e.g., police, fire, traffic) as well as to the public. Because of the difficulty and insecurity of sharing cryptographic keys, these data are available in the clear. However, authorities must have a mechanism to assure trust in the video, that is, to authenticate it. While lossless video is straightforward to authenticate by cryptographic means, lossy or otherwise impaired video as may result from UDP, wireless, or transcoded transmissions, is more difficult to authenticate. We describe a method that combines a concise and efficiently computed video fingerprint with public key cryptography to enable lossy video authentication. Experimental results relate video fingerprint length to authentication accuracy and latency (time-to-authentication).