Brickyard: Scalable Image Anonymization for Law Enforcement

Challenge

Brickyard's cutting-edge solutions are based on the collection of RGB and IR images using their camera enforcement and scanning car systems.

Camera enforcement solutions encompass fixed camera units mounted on poles, monitoring authorized vehicle entry into designated areas. Scan cars are based on modified conventional (electric) vehicles, equipped with advanced features like ANPR camera systems, precise GPS units, and panoramic cameras.

With the increasingly stringent Dutch and European GDPR regulations, Brickyard faced the challenge of ensuring the privacy and compliance of individuals captured in the imagery data - e.g., faces and license plates of vehicles that are not in violation.

Notably, the challenge was to exclude the license plates of vehicles involved in code violations from being blurred to facilitate effective identification and enforcement. Also, being a cloud-based solution, the anonymization process had to be deployed securely within Brickyard's own cloud infrastructure to prevent data transfers outside their databases.

Solution

Brickyard turned to Celantur for our expertise in automated image anonymization. Leveraging Celantur's Container, the solution was integrated into Brickyard's cloud environment, providing the security and scalability required to process approximately 30,000 images per day.

A remarkable aspect of the solution was the need to exclude specific license plates from being blurred. To address this, Celantur and Brickyard collaborated to develop a custom feature. The feature utilized coordinates from the input JSON file to automatically select areas in the image that needed to stay unblurred. This process enabled Brickyard's cloud-based system to accurately identify and enforce traffic violations while respecting privacy.

Summary