A Framework for Evaluating Image Obfuscation under Deep Learning-Assisted Privacy Attacks

Computer vision applications such as object detection and recognition, allow machines to visualize and perceive their environments. Nevertheless, these applications are guided by learning-based methods that require capturing, storing and processing large amounts of images thus rendering privacy and anonymity a major concern. In return, image obfuscation techniques (i.e., pixelating, blurring, and masking) have been developed to protect the sensitive information in images. In this paper, we propose a framework to evaluate and recommend the most robust obfuscation techniques in a specific domain of application. The proposed framework reconstructs obfuscated faces via deep learning-assisted attacks and assesses the reconstructions using structural/identity-based metrics. To evaluate and validate our approach, we conduct our experiments on a publicly available celebrity faces dataset. The obfuscation techniques considered are pixelating, blurring and masking. We evaluate the faces reconstructions against five deep learning-assisted privacy attackers. The most resilient obfuscation technique is recommended with regard to structural and identity-based metrics.