Emotion detection systems disclosed herein actively protect the privacy and security of monitored subjects. This provision of protection differentiates these systems from conventional emotion detectors. In some examples, a self-contained emotion detection device protects the identity of a subject while providing anonymous data descriptive of the subject's emotional state to other devices within the emotion detection system. In these examples, the emotion detection device protects the identity of the subject by isolating raw image data acquired by the device exclusively within storage locations encapsulated within the device. To provide the anonymous data, the emotion detection device first processes the raw image data to identify landmark points within an image of the subject's face. Next, the emotion detection device normalizes the landmark points to a generic face and transmits an anonymous data set descriptive of the normalized landmark points to the other devices for subsequent processing.