Smart video surveillance, is the implementation of automatic video technologies to closely monitor various situations. Nowadays, Video Surveillance is integral to security of many locations such as banks, malls, shops, and even homes. The proposed Smart Video Surveillance system uses motion detection to detect the presence of any intruder(s) in the environment. The method used for motion detection is the Cauchy distribution model which compares the current frame in the continuous video sequence to the previous frame, which is taken as the reference frame. The idea is that, if the difference between the current frame and the reference frame exceeds a specific threshold function, a motion is detected and detected pixel is identified. A novel method which sends an alert to the user's android smartphone via Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is used. A motion is detected when this difference exceeds the threshold value and the corresponding image is captured and stored while the user is notified with a GCM alert along with a custom sound. This image can be viewed and saved by the authorized user on the Android Smartphone. The performance of the proposed method is found to be better than the other existing systems as it enables the user to take immediate action to stop the crime while it is in progress. The registered user can alert police authorities if required.