SECRETS: A Secure Real-Time Multimedia Surveillance System

We propose a surveillance framework (SECRETS : SECure Real-time ElecTronic Surveillance) that is a practical solution to safeguarding sensitive physical facilities like command and control centers, missile storage facilities of a military base, traffic controller units of airports and other high-volume public areas by providing controlled secure distribution of live multimedia data recorded on-site onto display devices with different access permissions in a multi-level secure environment. Our methodology uses cameras and microphones as input devices and handheld radio linked displays as output devices. The geographical location of an input device determines its security level and the classification of the holder determines the security level of an output device. Our objective is to respect the security classifications whereby only those recipients with corresponding security classifications receive live media streams, but during emergencies, they can receive pre-computed emergency instructions and/or cover stories. This facilitates avoiding disorder and obtaining appropriate support from individuals with lower levels of clearances. We use SMIL [Aya01]formatted, multimedia feeds including cover stories, and explain how SECRETS can compose necessary multimedia documents, compute views for each security classification, enforce access control and deliver media to the handheld devices while respecting both wealthy run time semantics [KFW03b]of multimedia as well as MLS security [KFW03a].