In order to overcome the disadvantages of traditional centralized video monitoring system or distributed systems based on wired network, we propose a framework for distributed video surveillance in heterogeneous environment. Video flows are compressed with the scalable video encoding standard MPEG-4 and transmitted over Internet or wireless network. Video surveillance can be performed wherever there is Internet or mobile telephone signal. The feasibility of this framework has been demonstrated with a prototype implementation. The system is cheaper and easier to achieve with simple equipments, so it can be widely used in practice.