# Can poachers find animals from public camera trap images?

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.11236 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.11236/

## Key facts

- No citing papers in the map yet (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 3 of its 12 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 21 Jun 2021.

## Builds on (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Wide-Area Image Geolocalization with Aerial Reference Imagery](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1510.03743/) (2015)
- [PlaNet - Photo Geolocation with Convolutional Neural Networks](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1602.05314/) (2016)
- [Protecting Geolocation Privacy of Photo Collections](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1912.02085/) (2019)

## Abstract (arXiv)

To protect the location of camera trap data containing sensitive, high-target species, many ecologists randomly obfuscate the latitude and longitude of the camera when publishing their data. For example, they may publish a random location within a 1km radius of the true camera location for each camera in their network. In this paper, we investigate the robustness of geo-obfuscation for maintaining camera trap location privacy, and show via a case study that a few simple, intuitive heuristics and publicly available satellite rasters can be used to reduce the area likely to contain the camera by 87% (assuming random obfuscation within 1km), demonstrating that geo-obfuscation may be less effective than previously believed.