It is known in the prior art to use mobile devices for security surveillance, as well as to analyze image and video content for surveillance purposes. While the prior art discloses individual aspects as the present invention, very few, if any, teach the ability to authenticate and analyze captured inputs from un-registered user-devices. The present invention permits remote servers to accept captured inputs from a variety of mobile devices, authenticate metadata from the inputs, and analyze the inputs to provide surveillance information.
The proliferation of wireless, mobile devices having image and video functions is widespread and use of these device-functions continues to increase. Sporting events, social gatherings, dissident events, and emergency situations are typically captured on a multitude of devices operated by differing users. Nowhere in the prior art is provided social surveillance or security system that allows for uploading of these captured inputs, authentication of such inputs, and cloud-based analysis of the inputs in order to provide real- or near real-time surveillance of a target environment. Prior art documents teach that camera and video input devices may be equipped with a time-stamp function that embeds a date and time into an image or video for later authentication. Also, it is known in the prior art to provide authentication of users and/or devices through the evaluation of uploaded content, including stenographic techniques such as digital fingerprinting and watermarking, or user-verification techniques such as login or CAPTCHA technologies and biometric scanning.
Notably, most of the prior art security surveillance systems disclose the use of fixed devices, rather than the use of mobile devices. For example, content-based analytics is widely used in CCTV settings and when verifying that digital content has been unaltered or authenticating a content's source (e.g., copyrighted music, images and videos). Additionally, similar technology has been deployed in military and law enforcement units, although these technologies typically require specialized pre-registered devices, as opposed to incorporating distributed, unknown devices.
By way of example, prior art documents include:
U.S. Pat. No. 8,559,914 for “Interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) system” by inventor Jones filed Jan. 16, 2009, describes an interactive personal surveillance and security (IPSS) system for users carrying wireless communication devices. The system allows users carrying these devices to automatically capture surveillance information, have the information sent to one or more automated and remotely located surveillance (RLS) systems, and establish interactivity for the verification of determining secure or dangerous environments, encounters, logging events, or other encounters or observations. This IPSS is describes to enhance security and surveillance by determining a user's activities, including (a.) the user travel method (car, bus, motorcycle, bike, snow skiing, skate boarding, etc.); (b.) the user motion (walking, running, climbing, falling, standing, lying down, etc.); and (c.) the user location and the time of day or time allowance of an activity. When user submits uploaded (or directly sent) surveillance information to the public server, the surveillance videos, images and/or audio includes at least one or more of these searchable areas, location, address, date and time, event name or category, and/or name describing video.
U.S. Pat. No. 8,311,983 for “Correlated media for distributed sources” by inventor Guzik filed Dec. 14, 2009 (related to U.S. Publications 2010/0274816, 2011/0018998, 2013/0027552 and 2013/0039542) discloses method embodiments associating an identifier along with correlating metadata such as date/timestamp and location. The identifier may then be used to associate data assets that are related to a particular incident. The identifier may be used as a group identifier on a web service or equivalent to promote sharing of related data assets. Additional metadata may be provided along with commentary and annotations. The data assets may be further edited and post processed. Correlation can be based on multiple metadata values. For example, multiple still photos might be stored not only with date/time stamp metadata, but also with location metadata, possibly from a global positioning satellite (GPS) stamp. A software tool that collects all stored still photos taken within a window of time, for example during a security or police response to a crime incident, and close to the scene of a crime, may combine the photos of the incident into a sequence of pictures with which for investigation purposes. Here the correlation is both by time and location, and the presentation is a non-composite simultaneous display of different data assets. Correlating metadata can be based on a set of custom fields. For example, a set of video clips may be tagged with an incident name. Consider three field police officers each in a different city and in a different time zone, recording videos and taking pictures at exactly at midnight on New Year's Day 2013. As a default, a group may be identified to include all users with data files with the same Event ID. A group may also be either a predefined or a self-selecting group, for example a set belonging to a security agency, or a set of all police officers belonging to the homicide division, or even a set of officers seeking to share data regardless of if they are bellowing to an organized or unorganized group.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,379,879 for “Incident reporting system and method” by inventor Sloo filed Feb. 26, 1999, describes a computer-based method of collecting and processing incident reports received from witnesses who observe incidents such as criminal acts and legal violations. The method automates the collection and processing of the incident reports and automatically sends the incident reports to the appropriate authority so that the observed incidents can be acted on in an appropriate manner. For example, a witness may be equipped with a video input system such as a personal surveillance camera and a display. When the witness encounters an incident such as a suspect committing a crime, the video input system would automatically recognize the suspect from the video input and could then display records for the suspect on the witness's hand held readout without revealing the suspect's identity. The witness would not need to know the identity of the suspect to observe the incident relating to the suspect. Such a system may overcome some of the problems associated with publicly revealing personal data.
U.S. Publication 2009/0087161 for “Synthesizing a presentation of a multimedia event” by inventors Roberts, et al. filed Sep. 26, 2008, discloses a media synchronization system includes a media ingestion module to access a plurality of media clips received from a plurality of client devices, a media analysis module to determine a temporal relation between a first media clip from the plurality of media clips and a second media clip from the plurality of media clips, and a content creation module to align the first media clip and the second media clip based on the temporal relation, and to combine the first media clip and the second media clip to generate the presentation. Each user who submits content may be assigned an identity (ID). Users may upload their movie clips to an ID assignment server, attaching metadata to the clips as they upload them, or later as desired. This metadata may, for example, include the following: Event Name, Subject, Location, Date, Timestamp, Camera ID, and Settings. In some example embodiments, additional processing may be applied as well (e.g., by the recognition server and/or the content analysis sub-module). Examples of such additional processing may include, but are not limited to, the following: Face, instrument, or other image or sound recognition; Image analysis for bulk features like brightness, contrast, color histogram, motion level, edge level, sharpness, etc.; Measurement of (and possible compensation for) camera motion and shake.
U.S. Publication 2012/0282884 for “System and method for the emergency voice and image e-mail transmitter device” by inventor Sun filed May 5, 2011, describes a voice and image e-mail transmitter device with an external camera attachment that is designed for emergency and surveillance purposes is disclosed. The device converts voice signals and photo images into digital format, which are transmitted to the nearest voice-image message receiving station from where the digital signal strings are parsed and converted into voice, image, or video message files which are attached to an e-mail and delivered to user pre-defined destination e-mail addresses and a 911 rescue team. The e-mail also includes the caller's voice and personal information, photo images of a security threat, device serial number, and a GPS location map of the caller's location. When the PSU device is initially used, the user needs to pre-register personal information and whenever a digital signal string is transmitted out from the PSU device it will include these personal information data plus a time code of the message being sent, the PSU device's unique serial number, and the GPS generated location code, etc. which will all be imbedded in the PSU e-mail.
U.S. Publication 2012/0262576 for “Method and system for a network of multiple live video sources” by inventors Sechrist, et al. filed Mar. 15, 2012, discloses a system and a method that operate a network of multiple live video sources. In one embodiment, the system includes (i) a device server for communicating with one or more of the video sources each providing a video stream; (ii) an application server to allow controlled access of the network by qualified web clients; and (iii) a streaming server which, under direction of the application server, routes the video streams from the one or more video sources to the qualified web clients.
Geo-location information and contemporaneous timestamps may be embedded in the video stream together with a signature of the encoder, providing a mechanism for self-authentication of the video stream. A signature that is difficult to falsify (e.g., digitally signed using an identification code embedded in the hardware of the encoder) provides assurance of the trustworthiness of the geo-location information and timestamps, thereby establishing reliable time and space records for the recorded events. In general, data included in the database may be roughly classified into three categories: (i) automatically collected data; (ii) curated data; and (iii) derivative data. Automatically collected data includes, for example, such data as reading from environmental sensors and system operating parameters, which are collected as a matter of course automatically. Curated data are data that are collected from examination of the automatically collected data or from other sources and include, for example, content-based categorization of the video streams. For example, detection of a significant amount of motion at speeds typical of automobiles may suggest that the content is “traffic.” Derivative data includes any data resulting from analysis of the automatically collected data, the curated data, or any combination of such data. For example, the database may maintain a ranking of video source based on viewership or a surge in viewership over recent time period. Derivative data may be generated automatically or upon demand.
None of the prior art provides solutions for cloud-based analytics of distributed input devices for secure social surveillance as provided by the present invention.