Q&A: Making jpegs safer
Two experts explain the problems of using jpeg as a file format, and the possible solutions for privacy and copyright
Easily recognised
Professor Peter Schelkens from Flanders’ digital research centre iMinds and the Free University of Brussels (VUB) was one of the organisers, and Touradj Ebrahimi from École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland gave a presentation.
How prevalent is the jpeg?
Ebrahimi: If you count the number of jpeg images that are captured and shared on social networks, this is several billion each day. Jpeg is like a brand name, recognised as easily as Coca-Cola or Apple, and people use it as a synonym for picture. But its popularity has also become the source of its problems.
What kind of problems?
Schelkens: The two main issues faced by jpeg right now are related to privacy and copyright. When people post pictures on social media they often say “Oh, I shouldn’t have posted that” or “I should have only allowed a few people to look at it”. But they have no control over what happens to those images once they’re out there. These pictures also contain a lot of extra information, such as location and time, which could be a sensitive matter. The same goes for copyright. Once you upload your photos, there are really no easy ways to ensure they won’t be used without your permission.
How hard would it be to equip the format with more security measures?
Schelkens: The mechanisms needed are already in existence, from being able to easily remove faces from photos to creating access keys. But it’s a matter of three to four years before they become common standards.
Ebrahimi: From the technological perspective, it wouldn’t be hard at all. The first challenge is to identify the technology that cannot be easily hacked into. The second is the ecosystem. We need to make it backward compatible, so that people don’t have to invest in new cameras or phones.
Why haven’t companies like Facebook or Google addressed these issues?
Ebrahimi: They simply have no incentive to do so. By analysing our photos, they learn about us and the better they know us, the easier it is for them to push targeted advertisements at us. But if we can control what’s shown in our photos, even when they’re hosted on their servers, they can’t analyse them. We cut into their business.
Photo: Peter Schelkens and Touradj Ebrahimi, centre, at the jpeg workshop held in Brussels this week. Courtesy iMinds
