Improving privacy in JPEG images

The massive distribution and sharing of images increases the risk of privacy losses. There are several image formats, but one of the most used is JPEG. To take care of this, the JPEG standardization committee is promoting an activity on privacy and security, in order to provide protection at image level. This paper presents a mechanism to improve privacy in JPEG images by adding privacy policies inside them and encrypting both policies and images to perform access control based on those policies. Results of a feasibility experiment are also described. Part of our contribution is intended to be proposed for JPEG standardization.