World-driven access control

• US 9,413,784 B2
• Filed: 09/06/2013
• Issued: 08/09/2016
• Est. Priority Date: 09/06/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Inventors: Kohno, Tadayoshi, Molnar, David A., Moshchuk, Alexander N., Roesner, Franziska, Wang, Jiahe Helen
• Primary Examiner(s): Zee, Edward
• Application Number:
  US14/020,735
• Publication Number:
  US 20150074742A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,068 Days
• US Class Current: 1/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/54 by adding security routines or objects to programs
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/6245 Protecting personal data, e.g. for financial or medical purposes
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2221/2111 Location-sensitive, e.g. geographical location, GPS
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 63/20 for managing network security; network security policies in general filtering policies H04L63/0227
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/02 Protecting privacy or anonymity, e.g. protecting personally identifiable information [PII]
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/08 Access security
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 12/65 Environment-dependent, e.g. using captured environmental data
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/80 Services using short range communication, e.g. near-field communication [NFC], radio-frequency identification [RFID] or low energy communication
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 88/02 Terminal devices

Abstract

Functionality is described herein for managing the behavior of one or more applications, such as augmented reality applications and/or other environment-sensing applications. The functionality defines permission information in a world-driven manner, which means that the functionality uses a trusted mechanism to identify cues in the sensed environment, and then maps those cues to permission information. The functionality then uses the permission information to govern the operation of one or more applications.

Claims

1. A method, implemented by one or more computing devices, the method comprising:

receiving sensed information that represents a plurality of features in an environment;

associating the sensed information with one or more final policies to provide final policy information, the final policy information pertaining to at least one object in the environment and being specified, at least in part, by the environment;

identifying permissions which apply to one or more applications, based at least on the final policy information, to collectively provide permission information; and

governing behavior of said one or more applications based at least on the permission information,

wherein said governing comprises;

providing a filtered event, the filtered event expressing information obtained from the environment which has been filtered to reduce a presence of private information; and

sending the filtered event to an individual application, and

wherein the filtered event is produced by redacting parts of the information obtained from the environment.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said associating includes:

identifying a presence of a physical entity within the environment; and

determining an individual final policy based at least on the physical entity.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said associating includes:

identifying a sensed event occurring within the environment; and

determining an individual final policy based at least on the sensed event.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said associating includes:

identifying an explicit policy-specifying feature within the environment; and

identifying an individual final policy based at least on the explicit policy-specifying feature.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said associating includes determining, for at least one final policy, whether said at least one final policy is valid.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the associating includes:

determining a set of one or more candidate policies associated with a particular object in the environment; and

choosing an individual final policy from among the set of one or more candidate policies.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein said choosing comprises choosing, as the individual final policy, an individual candidate policy that is most restrictive within the set.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein said choosing comprises using a user-specified policy to override at least one other policy in the set.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said choosing is based, at least in part, on a determination of whether said at least one other policy is designated as mandatory.

10. The method of claim 6, wherein said choosing comprises inviting a user to choose among two or more candidate policies.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one final policy governs a behavior of at least one application until an explicit mode-changing event occurs.

12. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one final policy governs a behavior of at least one application for as long as a cue associated with said at least one final policy is detected within the environment.

13. The method of claim 1, wherein said governing comprises precluding or permitting another individual application from receiving another event expressing information obtained from the environment.

14. The method of claim 1, wherein the filtered event expresses video information and said redacting comprises removing a recognized object from the video information.

15. The method of claim 14, wherein the recognized object is a face of a person that appears in the video information.

16. The method of claim 1, wherein said governing comprises determining data items that the individual application is permitted to share with other entities, based at least on the permission information.

17. The method of claim 1, wherein said governing comprises determining output information that another individual application is permitted to send to one or more output devices, based at least on the permission information.

18. A computer-implemented system comprising:

one or more processing devices; and

one or more computer readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processing devices, cause the one or more processing devices to;

map sensed information, obtained by sensing an environment, into one or more candidate policies to provide candidate policy information, the candidate policy information applying to recognized objects in the environment, wherein the recognized objects include a first recognized object and a second recognized object that appear concurrently in the sensed environment;

determine a first final policy for the first recognized object and a second final policy for the second recognized object based at least on the candidate policy information;

identify first permissions which apply to a first application with respect to the first recognized object based at least on the first final policy;

identify second permissions which apply to a second application with respect to the second recognized object based at least on the second final policy; and

filter the first recognized object to remove first private information based at least on the first permissions and filter the second recognized object to remove second private information based at least on the second permissions.

19. The computer-implemented system of claim 18, wherein the first private information comprises text and the second private information comprises image information.

20. A computing system comprising:

a plurality of applications;

one or more environment sensing mechanisms configured to sense an environment and to obtain raw perceptual features that characterize the sensed environment;

one or more processing devices; and

one or more computer readable storage media storing instructions which, when executed by the one or more processing devices, cause the one or more processing devices to;

receive subscription requests from individual applications to receive events characterizing the sensed environment;

process the raw perceptual features to identify different recognized objects present in the sensed environment and to obtain the events characterizing the sensed environment;

identify different policies associated with the different recognized objects, the different policies having different permissions for different applications;

filter the events consistently with the different permissions to remove private information while the one or more environment sensing mechanisms continue to sense the environment; and

forward the filtered events to the different applications.