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Dynamic privacy assessment in a smart house environment using multimodal sensing

Published:20 November 2008Publication History
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Abstract

Surveillance applications in private environments such as smart houses require a privacy management policy if such systems are to be accepted by the occupants of the environment. This is due to the invasive nature of surveillance, and the private nature of the home. In this article, we propose a framework for dynamically altering the privacy policy applied to the monitoring of a smart house based on the situation within the environment. Initially the situation, or context, within the environment is determined; we identify several factors for determining environmental context, and propose methods to quantify the context using audio and binary sensor data. The context is then mapped to an appropriate privacy policy, which is implemented by applying data hiding techniques to control access to data gathered from various information sources. The significance of this work lies in the examination of privacy issues related to assisted-living smart house environments. A single privacy policy in such applications would be either too restrictive for an observer, for example, a carer, or too invasive for the occupants. We address this by proposing a dynamic method, with the aim of decreasing the invasiveness of the technology, while retaining the purpose of the system.

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    • Published in

      cover image ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications
      ACM Transactions on Multimedia Computing, Communications, and Applications  Volume 5, Issue 2
      November 2008
      187 pages
      ISSN:1551-6857
      EISSN:1551-6865
      DOI:10.1145/1413862
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2008 ACM

      Publisher

      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 20 November 2008
      • Revised: 1 March 2008
      • Accepted: 1 March 2008
      • Received: 1 November 2007
      Published in tomm Volume 5, Issue 2

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