Safeguarding National Security Interests Utilizing Location-Aware Camera Devices

Abstract: The rapid advancement of technology has resulted in advanced camera capabilities coming to smaller form factors with improved energy efficiency. These improvements have led to more efficient and capable cameras on mobile devices like mobile phones, tablets, and even eyeglasses. Using these unobtrusive cameras, users can capture photographs and videos of almost any location where they have physical access. Unfortunately, the proliferation of highly compact cameras has threatened the privacy rights of individuals and even entire nations and governments. For example, governments may not want photographs or videos of sensitive installations or locations like airside operations of military bases or the inner areas of nuclear power plants to be captured for unapproved uses. In addition, solutions that obfuscate images in post-processing are subject to threats that could siphon unprocessed data. Our work proposes a Global Positioning System-based approach to restrict the ability of smart cameras to capture and store images of sensitive areas.