A method is proposed for preventing privacy invasion through unintentional capture of facial images. Prevention methods such as covering the face and painting particular patterns on the face are effective but hinder face-to-face communication. The proposed method overcomes this problem through the use of a device worn on the face that transmits near-infrared signals that are picked up by camera image sensors, which makes the face in captured images undetectable. The device is similar in appearance to a pair of eyeglasses, and the signals cannot be seen by the human eye, so face-to-face communication is not hindered. Testing of a prototype "privacy visor" showed that it can effectively prevent privacy invasion via face detection by corrupting the facial images.

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A method is proposed for preventing unauthorized face image revelation through unintentional capture of facial images. Methods such as covering the face and painting particular patterns on the face effectively prevent detection of facial images but hinder face-to-face communication. The proposed method overcomes this problem through the use of a device worn on the face that transmits near-infrared signals that are picked up by camera image sensors, which makes faces in captured images undetectable. The device is similar in appearance to a pair of eyeglasses, and the signals cannot be seen by the human eye, so face-to-face communication is not hindered. Testing of a prototype "privacy visor" showed that captured facial images are sufficiently corrupted to prevent unauthorized face image revelation by face detection.

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SUMMARYWithin information hiding technology, digital watermarking is one of the most important technologies for copyright protection of digital content. Many digital watermarking schemes have been proposed in academia. However, these schemes are not used, because they are not practical; one reason for this is that the evaluation criteria are loosely defined. To make the evaluation more concrete and improve the practicality of digital watermarking, watermarking schemes must use common evaluation criteria. To realize such criteria, we organized the Information Hiding and its Criteria for Evaluation (IHC) Committee to create useful, globally accepted evaluation criteria for information hiding technology. The IHC Committee improves their evaluation criteria every year, and holds a competition for digital watermarking based on state-of-the-art evaluation criteria. In this paper, we describe the activities of the IHC Committee and its evaluation criteria for digital watermarking of still images, videos, and audio.