15th Feb 2024: Astro Pixel Processor 2.0.0-beta29 released - macOS native File Chooser, macOS CMD-Q fixed, read-only Fits on network fixed and other bug fixes
7th December 2023: added payment option Alipay to purchase Astro Pixel Processor from China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan and other countries where Alipay is used.
I just noticed the 1.083 has a new feature to batch edit FITS metadata for correcting headers like BAYERPAT or INSTRUME.
This is nice, I used to use 'astfits' and a bit of bash magic for this. However, I was wondering if there could be a quick win to build on top of this feature, the batch removal of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) from FITS files.
As it is, many capture programs write data into the FITS files that one may not want publicly available (like the rough GPS coordinates of your house/observatory) and this impedes the sharing of raw image data on public forums for the privacy-conscious.
Likewise, services or collaborative efforts that collect donated data from amateurs technically find themselves subject to the EU-GDPR due to collecting these data elements that are technically PII.
We could avoid all this if the data in question was easier to remove (via APP for example)
I was thinking about these keywords specifically that could be batch-stripped from the FITS files:
- AUTHOR
- OBSERVER
- LATITUDE
- SITELAT, SITELONG
Maybe there are others, this seems to be poorly standardized.
Hope to hear your take on this,
Benny
