Protecting Privacy From Aerial photography: State of the Art, Opportunities, and Challenges

With the continuous development of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) photography and mapping technology, there are more and more air-to-ground information acquisition methods, which provide more choices for both industry and entertainment. Under the help of drones, operators can obtain and collect information on the ground, and air-to-ground images are often the convenient types. However, the issue of privacy protection can not be ignored here. In special situations, it will violate the right of privacy. Faced with such a problem, how to properly prevent privacy leakage and protect air-to-ground information security has become an unavoidable topic. In this paper, we make a detailed survey to summarize the relevant both technical and legal issues. Specially, the whole survey can be divided into four main parts: overview of airborne optical equipment, possible privacy infringement methods based on drones, privacy protection in drones applications and related legal aspects. Based on the survey content in this article, we can set up several valuable research directions in this field and improve the privacy protection in civilian drones applications. More effective privacy protection methods will also be applied to industry to enhance the application effect of UAV aerial photography technology.