Survey of techniques for fight against counterfeit goods and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) infringing

The objective of this report is provide a survey on the techniques (i.e., technologies and procedures) that can be used in the fight against the distribution of counterfeit goods in various domains. Different techniques can be used to identify and control the distribution of counterfeit goods at different levels. The list of surveyed techniques and approaches in this report includes: a) technologies for goods authentication, which can be used to distinguish between genuine and counterfeit goods, b) track and trace technologies, which can be used to control the supply and distribution chains to make it easier to detect counterfeit goods in the supply chain entering through a legitimate distribution channel, c) technologies and procedures for container tracking and sealing c) technologies for the analysis of ecommerce web sites, which can be used to identify sellers of counterfeit products and d) set-up of organizational structure and processes. Each technique may not be the only valid solution for the problem of production and distribution of counterfeit products. The problem of counterfeiting is related to many different domains and goods (e.g., agricultural products, electronic circuits, medicines) and each technique can be applied with different degrees of success to different domains. In addition, each technique has a different level of market maturity: some techniques are still in the research stages while others have been already deployed in the market for years. The survey evaluates and compares the techniques against the different domains using different metrics, which include the design and deployment costs, the complexity of the technology, the usability and so on. The comparison of the techniques is based on collected evidence both from literature and from direct feedback from law enforcers and stakeholders. The report also links the design and deployment of the identified techniques with organization and processes aspects. The feasibility and operational success of some techniques is only possible if an organization framework (e.g., supply chain management) is in place. On the other side, specific technologies (e.g., authentication technologies) can greatly improve organizational-based approach to limit the risk of distribution of counterfeit productsJRC.G.6 - Digital Citizen Securit

Edge analytics in the internet of things

High-data-rate sensors are becoming ubiquitous in the Internet of Things. GigaSight is an Internet-scale repository of crowd-sourced video content that enforces privacy preferences and access controls. The architecture is a federated system of VM-based cloudlets that perform video analytics at the edge of the Internet

SnapLink: Fast and Accurate Vision-Based Appliance Control in Large Commercial Buildings

As the number and heterogeneity of appliances in smart buildings increases, identifying and controlling them becomes challenging. Existing methods face various challenges when deployed in large commercial buildings. For example, voice command assistants require users to memorize many control commands. Attaching Bluetooth dongles or QR codes to appliances introduces considerable deployment overhead. In comparison, identifying an appliance by simply pointing a smartphone camera at it and controlling the appliance using a graphical overlay interface is more intuitive. We introduce SnapLink, a responsive and accurate vision-based system for mobile appliance identification and interaction using image localization. Compared to the image retrieval approaches used in previous vision-based appliance control systems, SnapLink exploits 3D models to improve identification accuracy and reduce deployment overhead via quick video captures and a simplified labeling process. We also introduce a feature sub-sampling mechanism to achieve low latency at the scale of a commercial building. To evaluate SnapLink, we collected training videos from 39 rooms to represent the scale of a modern commercial building. It achieves a 94% successful appliance identification rate among 1526 test images of 179 appliances within 120 ms average server processing time. Furthermore, we show that SnapLink is robust to viewing angle and distance differences, illumination changes, as well as daily changes in the environment. We believe the SnapLink use case is not limited to appliance control: it has the potential to enable various new smart building applications

Anonymous subject identification and privacy information management in video surveillance

The widespread deployment of surveillance cameras has raised serious privacy concerns, and many privacy-enhancing schemes have been recently proposed to automatically redact images of selected individuals in the surveillance video for protection. Of equal importance are the privacy and efficiency of techniques to first, identify those individuals for privacy protection and second, provide access to original surveillance video contents for security analysis. In this paper, we propose an anonymous subject identification and privacy data management system to be used in privacy-aware video surveillance. The anonymous subject identification system uses iris patterns to identify individuals for privacy protection. Anonymity of the iris-matching process is guaranteed through the use of a garbled-circuit (GC)-based iris matching protocol. A novel GC complexity reduction scheme is proposed by simplifying the iris masking process in the protocol. A user-centric privacy information management system is also proposed that allows subjects to anonymously access their privacy information via their iris patterns. The system is composed of two encrypted-domain protocols: The privacy information encryption protocol encrypts the original video records using the iris pattern acquired during the subject identification phase; the privacy information retrieval protocol allows the video records to be anonymously retrieved through a GC-based iris pattern matching process. Experimental results on a public iris biometric database demonstrate the validity of our framework

Development of an IoT-Based QR Code Access Control and Payment System using Arduino and ESP8266

In this research, we present the development and implementation of an IoT-based access control and payment system utilizing QR code technology, Arduino microcontroller, and ESP8266 Wi-Fi module. The system is designed to enhance security and streamline payment processes in various applications such as parking lots, public transport, and restricted access areas. The core components include an ESP camera for QR code scanning, a Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) for user feedback, and a pair of motors to control physical barriers. Upon scanning a QR code, the system verifies its validity and either grants access or denies it based on pre-set criteria. For valid QR codes, the system deducts a specified amount from the user’s balance, displays the updated balance on the LCD, and operates the motors to allow entry. Invalid QR codes trigger an audio alert via a buzzer. The system communicates transaction data to a remote server using the ESP8266 module, ensuring real-time logging and monitoring. The project highlights the integration of hardware components with software modules to achieve a robust and efficient access control solution. By leveraging IoT technologies, the system offers improved security, real-time data processing, and automated transaction handling. This research contributes to the field of IoT-based automation by demonstrating a practical application in access management and payment systems, providing a scalable and versatile solution for modern access control challenges

Privacy, security and data protection in smart cities : a critical EU law perspective

"Smart cities" are a buzzword of the moment. Although legal interest is growing, most academic responses at least in the EU, are still from the technological, urban studies, environmental and sociological rather than legal, sectors and have primarily laid emphasis on the social, urban, policing and environmental benefits of smart cities, rather than their challenges, in often a rather uncritical fashion . However a growing backlash from the privacy and surveillance sectors warns of the potential threat to personal privacy posed by smart cities . A key issue is the lack of opportunity in an ambient or smart city environment for the giving of meaningful consent to processing of personal data; other crucial issues include the degree to which smart cities collect private data from inevitable public interactions, the "privatisation" of ownership of both infrastructure and data, the repurposing of “big data” drawn from IoT in smart cities and the storage of that data in the Cloud. This paper, drawing on author engagement with smart city development in Glasgow as well as the results of an international conference in the area curated by the author, argues that smart cities combine the three greatest current threats to personal privacy, with which regulation has so far failed to deal effectively; the Internet of Things(IoT) or "ubiquitous computing"; "Big Data" ; and the Cloud. It seeks solutions both from legal institutions such as data protection law and from "code", proposing in particular from the ethos of Privacy by Design, a new "social impact assessment" and new human:computer interactions to promote user autonomy in ambient environments