PACT: Privacy Sensitive Protocols and Mechanisms for Mobile Contact Tracing

Abstract

The global health threat from COVID-19 has been controlled in a number of instances by large-scale testing and contact tracing efforts. We created this document to suggest three functionalities on how we might best harness computing technologies to supporting the goals of public health organizations in minimizing morbidity and mortality associated with the spread of COVID-19, while protecting the civil liberties of individuals. In particular, this work advocates for a third-party free approach to assisted mobile contact tracing, because such an approach mitigates the security and privacy risks of requiring a trusted third party. We also explicitly consider the inferential risks involved in any contract tracing system, where any alert to a user could itself give rise to de-anonymizing information. More generally, we hope to participate in bringing together colleagues in industry, academia, and civil society to discuss and converge on ideas around a critical issue rising with attempts to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic.

22 pages, 2 figures

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• A Privacy-preserving Mobile and Fog Computing Framework to Trace and Prevent COVID-19 Community Transmission
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• Contact Tracing: Beyond the Apps
• PURE: A Framework for Analyzing Proximity-based Contact Tracing Protocols
• SNARKs to the rescue: proof-of-contact in zero knowledge
• Engineering and Implementation of SimAEN
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• Public Goods From Private Data -- An Efficacy and Justification Paradox for Digital Contact Tracing
• Digital Contact Tracing: Technologies, Shortcomings, and the Path Forward
• Privacy-accuracy trade-offs in noisy digital exposure notifications