Patent ID: 8689293

Claim:
An access control device for controlling accesses by users to image contents each including still image data or video image data, the access control device comprising: a storage circuit storing first user information in association with each of one or more persons, each piece of the first user information being a set of identification information of one or more users who are permitted by a person to access image contents including image data in which the person is a subject; an obtaining circuit obtaining an image content together with a piece of second user information, both having been transmitted from an external transmitter, the image content including image data in which one or more persons are subjects, and the piece of the second user information being a set of identification information of one or more users who are desired by the transmitter to be permitted to access the image content; and a control circuit (i) extracting, from the first user information, one or more pieces of identification information of one or more users who are permitted by all of the one or more persons, who are the subjects of the image data included in the image content obtained by the obtaining circuit, to access the image content and (ii) permitting a user to access the image content when the user is included among the one or more users indicated by the piece of the second user information and is included among the one or more users indicated by the one or more pieces of identification information extracted by the control circuit.