Abstract: Systems and methods of capturing privacy protected images and performing machine vision tasks are described. An embodiment includes a system that includes an optical component and an image processing application configured to capture distorted video using the optical component, where the optical component includes a set of optimal camera lens parameters ?*o learned using machine learning, performing a machine vision task on the distorted video, where the machine vision task includes a set of optimal action recognition parameters ?*c learned using the machine learning, and generating a classification based on the machine vision task, where the machine learning is jointly trained to optimize the optical element and the machine vision task.