PVA (privacy through visual anonymity) lab for enhancing CS education and outreach (abstract only)

Given that many modern computing technologies have led to privacy issues in today's digital world, the latest CS curriculum (CS2013 - Ironman Version 1.0) has recommended a strong need for inclusion of privacy topics within the present body of knowledge. According to the above curriculum, there is a requirement for global awareness of today's growing privacy concerns with technology. Our proposed lab caters to the above curricular recommendation. We present a physical security focused lab, which is based on the technology of PVA (Privacy through Visual Anonymity). Through this hands-on PVA lab, we teach pre-university and university students the notion of privacy in images/videos and educate them in the technique of VA (Visual Anonymity), which can help safeguard one's privacy by obscuring the individual identity in pictures/videos captured by cameras. Using this lab, we intend to enhance CS education and outreach by making students aware of the global issue of privacy invasion in today's surveillance and by demonstrating how the issue can be addressed via VA. The lab exercises are based on two open-source applications, namely "ObscuraCam" and "YouTube-FaceBlur". These applications are used as tools for enabling students to learn the concept of PVA. In this process, we show students an innovative aspect of balancing security and privacy in technology, thereby drawing their focus to the humanitarian side of CS applications. Our topic of PVA also enhances the IAS knowledge area in the latest CS curriculum.