visual sensing: Projects: Kapadia Privacy Lab: Indiana University

Vision for Privacy: Privacy-Aware Visual Sensing

Abstract

The millions of smartphones that people use every day are sophisticated computational and sensory devices. A variety of powerful and potentially transformative applications could be created by aggregating together data from the cameras and sensors on these phones in order to observe the world at a massive scale and in real time. Emerging technologies such as augmented reality glasses like Google Glass, lifelogging cameras such as Google Clip, Narrative Clip, and Autographer, and head-mounted cameras such as Snapchat Spectacles are also expected to make cameras and such applications ubiquitous. However, such ‘visual social sensing’ would raise major privacy concerns because of the large amount of potentially private data that could be captured (see our exploration on ‘visual malware’ called PlaceRaider). Our research objective is to investigate how to use opportunistically-captured photos for innovative and potentially transformative applications, while providing guarantees on privacy to both people using wearable cameras and those in the vicinity of such cameras. We have also been exploring how wearable cameras can be used to enhance the privacy of people with visual impairments.

Watch Our Video

A rise in public image gathering with wearable technologies -- called "lifelogging" -- has complex privacy implications for both individuals and society. Indiana University researchers, funded by the National Science Foundation, are studying the privacy implications from both a sociological and technological perspective. Their goal is to design new tools to help people manage their personal privacy in a camera-rich world. For more information on this research, see http://go.iu.edu/nQR.

People

Faculty

Apu Kapadia, Indiana University
David Crandall, Indiana University
Denise Anthony, Dartmouth College
Roberto Hoyle, Oberlin College

PhD Students

Tousif Ahmed
Taslima Akter
Eman Hassan
Rakib Hasan
Mohammed Korayem
Zahid Rahman

Alumni

Robert Templeman, Former PhD Student
Steven Armes, Former Undergraduate Researcher

Publications

Rakibul Hasan, Yifang Li, Eman Hassan, Kelly Caine, David J. Crandall, Roberto Hoyle, and Apu Kapadia,
“Can Privacy Be Satisfying? On Improving Viewer Satisfaction for Privacy-Enhanced Photos Using Aesthetic Transforms,”
To appear in the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’19),
Glasgow, UK, May 4–9, 2019.
(bibtex)
Tousif Ahmed, Apu Kapadia, Venkatesh Potluri, and Manohar Swaminathan,
“Up to a Limit? Privacy Concerns of Bystanders and Their Willingness to Share Additional Information with Visually Impaired Users of Assistive Technologies“,
Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive, Mobile, Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies (IMWUT ’18/UbiComp ’18),
Vol. 2, No. 3, Article 89, 27 pages (September 2018).
(bibtex)(acm)
Yasmeen Rashidi, Tousif Ahmed, Felicia Patel, Emily Fath, Apu Kapadia, Christena Nippert-Eng, and Norman Makoto Su,
“You don’t want to be the next meme”: College Students’ Workarounds to Manage Privacy in the Era of Pervasive Photography,”
In Proceedings of the USENIX Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS ’18),
pp. 143–157, Baltimore, Maryland, August 12–14, 2018.
(bibtex)(usenix)
Rakibul Hasan, Eman Hassan, Yifang Li, Kelly Caine, David J. Crandall, Roberto Hoyle, and Apu Kapadia,
“Viewer Experience of Obscuring Scene Elements in Photos to Enhance Privacy,”
In Proceedings of the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18),
pp. 47:1–47:13, Montréal, Canada, April 21–26, 2018.
(bibtex)(acm)
Eman Hassan, Rakibul Hasan, Patrick Shaffer, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Cartooning for Enhanced Privacy in Lifelogging and Streaming Video,”
In Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshop on Computer Vision Challenges and Opportunities for Privacy and Security (CV-COPS ’17),
pp. 29–38, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, July 21, 2017.
(bibtex)(cvpr)(ieee)
Tousif Ahmed, Roberto Hoyle, Patrick Shaffer, Kay Connelly, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Understanding Physical Safety, Security, and Privacy Concerns of People with Visual Impairments,”
IEEE Internet Computing, Special Issue on Usable Security
Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 56–63 (May/June 2017).
(bibtex)(ieee)
Tousif Ahmed, Patrick Shaffer, Kay Connelly, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Addressing Physical Safety, Security, and Privacy for People with Visual Impairments,”
In Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS ’16),
pp. 341–354, Denver, CO, USA, Jun 22–24, 2016.
(bibtex)(usenix)
Tousif Ahmed, Roberto Hoyle, Patrick Shaffer, Kay Connelly, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Understanding Physical Safety, Security, and Privacy Concerns of People with Visual Impairments,”
IEEE Internet Computing, Special Issue on Usable Security
Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 56–63 (May/June 2017).
(bibtex)(ieee)
Mohammed Korayem, Robert Templeman, Dennis Chen, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Enhancing Lifelogging Privacy by Detecting Screens,”
In Proceedings of The ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’16)
(bibtex)(project page)
Tousif Ahmed, Roberto Hoyle, Kay Connelly, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Privacy Concerns and Behaviors of People with Visual Impairments,”
To appear (Paper) in The ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15),
Seoul, South Korea, April 18–23, 2015.
(bibtex)
Roberto Hoyle, Robert Templeman, Denise Anthony, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Sensitive Lifelogs: A Privacy Analysis of Photos from Wearable Cameras,”
To appear (Note) in The ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’15),
Seoul, South Korea, April 18–23, 2015.
(bibtex)
Mohammed Korayem, Robert Templeman, Dennis Chen, David Crandall, Apu Kapadia,
“ScreenAvoider: Protecting Computer Screens from Ubiquitous Cameras,”
CoRR arXiv Technical Report arXiv:1412.0008, November 2014.
Robert Templeman, Roberto Hoyle, Apu Kapadia, and David Crandall,
“Reactive Security: Responding to Visual Stimuli from Wearable Cameras,”
In Proceedings of the Workshop on Usable Privacy & Security for wearable and domestic ubIquitous DEvices (UPSIDE ’14),
pp. 1297–1306, Seattle, WA, USA, Sep 14, 2014.
(bibtex)(acm)
Roberto Hoyle, Robert Templeman, Steven Armes, Denise Anthony, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Privacy Behaviors of Lifeloggers using Wearable Cameras,”
In Proceedings of The ACM International Joint Conference on Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp ’14),
pp. 571–582, Seattle, WA, USA, September 13–17, 2014.
(bibtex)(acm)(supplement)
Robert Templeman, Mohammed Korayem, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“PlaceAvoider: Steering First-Person Cameras away from Sensitive Spaces,”
In Proceedings of The 21st Annual Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS ’14),
San Diego, CA, February 23–26, 2014.
(bibtex)
Mohammed Korayem, David Crandall, and Apu Kapadia,
“Objectavoider: Detecting Sensitive Objects in Imagery from Wearable Cameras (Poster),”
In The 21st Annual Network & Distributed System Security Symposium (NDSS ’14),
San Diego, CA, February 23–26, 2014.

Media Coverage

Project
IU Bloomington Newsroom, Dec 18, 2014.

PlaceAvoider
MIT Technology Review, Jan 28, 2014
Fast Company, Jan 28, 2014
Gizmodo, Feb 12, 2014

ScreenAvoider
Motherboard, Dec 3, 2014

Acknowledgement

This work is partially funded by the Office of the Vice Provost of Research at Indiana University Bloomington through the Faculty Research Support Program, a Google Research Award, and the National Science Foundation. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.

visual sensing