Control viewing access to documents in collaborative scenarios using facial recognition from webcams

A method for operating a policy enforcement module cooperating with a computing device comprising at least one webcam;

• a face detection module coupled to the at least one webcam to detect faces of viewers that are within a field of view of the at least one webcam, to provide an image of the detected faces to a face identification service, and to receive user identifications (IDs) from the face identification service on the detected faces that have been identified;
• and
• a document viewer module configured to retrieve a document for display, with the document being retrieved based on a link to the document, the method comprising:
• receiving from the face identification service user IDs on detected faces that have been identified in the image;
• using the link to the document being retrieved for display to query metadata associated with the document to determine an access control list for the document, with the metadata being queried where the document is stored;
• comparing the user IDs of the detected faces that have been identified to user IDs on the access control list to determine authorized viewers of the document;
• displaying the image of the detected faces with a respective user ID and authorization status overlaid on each identified face;
• displaying the image of the detected faces with an unknown status for each face that cannot be identified;
• and
• obscuring display of the document if one of the identified faces is not authorized to view the document.

A non-transitory computer readable medium for a policy enforcement module cooperating with a computing device comprising a face detection module coupled to at least one webcam to detect faces of viewers that are within a field of view of the at least one webcam, to provide an image of the detected faces to a face identification service, and to receive user identifications (IDs) from the face identification service on the detected faces that have been identified;

• a document viewer module configured to retrieve a document for display, with the document being retrieved based on a link to the document;
• with the policy enforcement module coupled to the face detection module and to the document viewer module, and with the non-transitory computer readable medium having a plurality of computer executable instructions for causing the policy enforcement module to perform steps comprising:
• receiving from the face identification service user IDs on detected faces that have been identified in the image;
• using the link to the document being retrieved for display to query metadata associated with the document to determine an access control list for the document, with the metadata being queried where the document is stored;
• comparing the user IDs of the detected faces that have been identified to user IDs on the access control list to determine authorized viewers of the document;
• displaying the image of the detected faces with a respective user ID and authorization status overlaid on each identified face;
• displaying the image of the detected faces with an unknown status for each face that cannot be identified;
• and
• obscuring display of the document it one of the identified faces is not authorized to view the document.