A User Study of a Wearable System to Enhance Bystanders’ Facial Privacy

The privacy of users and information are becoming increasingly important with the growth and pervasive use of mobile devices such as wearables, mobile phones, drones, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Today many of these mobile devices are equipped with cameras which enable users to take pictures and record videos anytime they need to do so. In many such cases, bystanders’ privacy is not a concern, and as a result, audio and video of bystanders are often captured without their consent. We present results from a user study in which 21 participants were asked to use a wearable system called FacePET developed to enhance bystanders’ facial privacy by providing a way for bystanders to protect their own privacy rather than relying on external systems for protection. While past works in the literature focused on privacy perceptions of bystanders when photographed in public/shared spaces, there has not been research with a focus on user perceptions of bystander-based wearable devices to enhance privacy. Thus, in this work, we focus on user perceptions of the FacePET device and/or similar wearables to enhance bystanders’ facial privacy. In our study, we found that 16 participants would use FacePET or similar devices to enhance their facial privacy, and 17 participants agreed that if smart glasses had features to conceal users’ identities, it would allow them to become more popular

The Implications of New Technologies on Privacy Rights

The rise in new technologies is very essential in this contemporary world and it has facilitated the communication sector, improve health and economic development. These new digital tools has made life somehow comfortable and accelerated economic growth in the universe. Nevertheless, these digital tools are a threat to privacy of persons.in the course of manipulating these gadgets, they infringe on the rights of privacy of individuals. Some people misuse these gadgets and they do not use it responsibly.Tehila Schwarz noted that”privacy is in the hands of a digital world”. A smartphone has multiple functions to invade the privacy of individual, because a smartphone can record messages, videotape events, likewise Close Circuit Television Cameras (CCTV), which are installed in homes and streets, they monitor individuals silently, they are installed for security purpose but in the course of monitoring the activities of individuals, they cross the boundary to invade privacy of persons, because they monitor everybody under the vicinity of the camera. Similarly, an instrument like Global Positioning System (GPS) is capable to detect the position or location of persons, it is use to track individual’s movement and position and even cars .These tools are all imperative for our wellbeing but it intrudes on the privacy of individuals

FacePET: Enhancing Bystanders\u27 Facial Privacy with Smart Wearables/Internet of Things

Given the availability of cameras in mobile phones, drones and Internet-connected devices, facial privacy has become an area of major interest in the last few years, especially when photos are captured and can be used to identify bystanders’ faces who may have not given consent for these photos to be taken and be identified. Some solutions to protect facial privacy in photos currently exist. However, many of these solutions do not give a choice to bystanders because they rely on algorithms that de-identify photos or protocols to deactivate devices and systems not controlled by bystanders, thereby being dependent on the bystanders’ trust in these systems to protect his/her facial privacy. To address these limitations, we propose FacePET (Facial Privacy Enhancing Technology), a wearable system worn by bystanders and designed to enhance facial privacy. We present the design, implementation, and evaluation of the FacePET and discuss some open research issues

Leakiness: Literal and Phenomenal

By designing a series of house-like pavilions that leak (fluids and information) in specific ways, this thesis will develop an explicit lexicon for architects to employ in managing the ‘metadata’ that buildings perpetually emit. As a matter of design, these structures will operate on the leaked visible, non-visible, and absent metadata generated incidental to our occupation of buildings. The pavilions will ultimately probe similar sets of conditions, each conveying a radically different tone. Whether stopping or amplifying, scrambling or spoofing, deceiving or decoding, they seek to effect a measurable change on the metadata leaked from within. In order to objectively critique their effects, the pavilions will initially tackle a single metadata type each possessing a distinct tone. Following these tests the pavilions will probe three or more forms of metadata leakage simultaneously, testing architecture’s capacity to consciously manage multiple forms of leakage

Visual Content Privacy Protection: A Survey

Vision is the most important sense for people, and it is also one of the main ways of cognition. As a result, people tend to utilize visual content to capture and share their life experiences, which greatly facilitates the transfer of information. Meanwhile, it also increases the risk of privacy violations, e.g., an image or video can reveal different kinds of privacy-sensitive information. Researchers have been working continuously to develop targeted privacy protection solutions, and there are several surveys to summarize them from certain perspectives. However, these surveys are either problem-driven, scenario-specific, or technology-specific, making it difficult for them to summarize the existing solutions in a macroscopic way. In this survey, a framework that encompasses various concerns and solutions for visual privacy is proposed, which allows for a macro understanding of privacy concerns from a comprehensive level. It is based on the fact that privacy concerns have corresponding adversaries, and divides privacy protection into three categories, based on computer vision (CV) adversary, based on human vision (HV) adversary, and based on CV \& HV adversary. For each category, we analyze the characteristics of the main approaches to privacy protection, and then systematically review representative solutions. Open challenges and future directions for visual privacy protection are also discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 13 figure

Design and Evaluation of a Wearable System for Facial Privacy

Through the increasingly common use of devices that provide ubiquitous sensor data such as wearables, mobile phones, and Internet-connected devices of the sort, privacy challenges are becoming even more significant. One major challenge that requires more focus is bystanders\u27 privacy, as there are too few solutions that solve the issue. Of the solutions available, many of them do not give bystanders a choice in how their private data is used, Bystanders\u27 privacy has become an afterthought when it comes to data capture in the forms of photographs, videos, voice recordings, etc. and continues to remain that way. This thesis provides a solution to enhance bystanders\u27 facial privacy by developing a wearable device called FacePET that provides a way for bystanders to protect their privacy and give consent. FacePET was evaluated using experiments to detect faces in photos when users wore the device and by performing a usability study with 21 participants. We found that FacePET was successfully able to block 15 of the 21 participants\u27 faces, yielding a success percentage of 71%. We found through the usability study that a majority of the participants would be willing to use FacePET, or a similar device, daily for their facial privacy protection

Handbook of Digital Face Manipulation and Detection

This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of studies dealing with the hot topic of digital face manipulation such as DeepFakes, Face Morphing, or Reenactment. It combines the research fields of biometrics and media forensics including contributions from academia and industry. Appealing to a broad readership, introductory chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, which address readers wishing to gain a brief overview of the state-of-the-art. Subsequent chapters, which delve deeper into various research challenges, are oriented towards advanced readers. Moreover, the book provides a good starting point for young researchers as well as a reference guide pointing at further literature. Hence, the primary readership is academic institutions and industry currently involved in digital face manipulation and detection. The book could easily be used as a recommended text for courses in image processing, machine learning, media forensics, biometrics, and the general security area

Regulating Mass Surveillance as Privacy Pollution: Learning from Environmental Impact Statements

Encroachments on privacy through mass surveillance greatly resemble the pollution crisis in that they can be understood as imposing an externality on the surveilled. This Article argues that this resemblance also suggests a solution: requiring those conducting mass surveillance in and through public spaces to disclose their plans publicly via an updated form of environmental impact statement, thus requiring an impact analysis and triggering a more informed public conversation about privacy. The Article first explains how mass surveillance is polluting public privacy and surveys the limited and inadequate doctrinal tools available to respond to mass surveillance technologies. Then, it provides a quick summary of the Privacy Impact Notices ( PINs ) proposal to make a case in principle for the utility and validity of PINs. Next, the Article explains how environmental law responded to a similar set problems (taking the form of physical harms to the environment) with the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 ( NEPA ), requiring Environmental Impact Statement ( EIS ) requirements for environmentally sensitive projects. Given the limitations of the current federal privacy impact analysis requirement, the Article offers an initial sketch of what a PIN proposal would cover and its application to classic public spaces, as well as virtual spaces such as Facebook and Twitter. The Article also proposes that PINs apply to private and public data collection -including the NSA\u27s surveillance of communications. By recasting privacy harms as a form of pollution and invoking a familiar (if not entirely uncontroversial) domestic regulatory solution either directly or by analogy, the PINs proposal seeks to present a domesticated form of regulation with the potential to ignite a regulatory dynamic by collecting information about the privacy costs of previously unregulated activities that should, in the end, lead to significant results without running afoul of potential U.S. constitutional limits that may constrain data retention and use policies. Finally, the Article addresses three counterarguments focusing on the First Amendment right to data collection, the inadequacy of EISs, and the supposed worthlessness of notice-based regimes

Handbook of Digital Face Manipulation and Detection

This open access book provides the first comprehensive collection of studies dealing with the hot topic of digital face manipulation such as DeepFakes, Face Morphing, or Reenactment. It combines the research fields of biometrics and media forensics including contributions from academia and industry. Appealing to a broad readership, introductory chapters provide a comprehensive overview of the topic, which address readers wishing to gain a brief overview of the state-of-the-art. Subsequent chapters, which delve deeper into various research challenges, are oriented towards advanced readers. Moreover, the book provides a good starting point for young researchers as well as a reference guide pointing at further literature. Hence, the primary readership is academic institutions and industry currently involved in digital face manipulation and detection. The book could easily be used as a recommended text for courses in image processing, machine learning, media forensics, biometrics, and the general security area