RAPID: An Organizational Scale Approach to Privacy-Enabled Contact Tracing in COVID-19

接触者追踪已成为防止COVID-19等流行病传播的关键缓解策略。最近，已经发起了若干努力来使用诸如蓝牙信标、蜂窝数据记录和智能手机应用的技术来跟踪个人、他们的移动和交互。这些解决方案可能是侵入性的，可能侵犯个人隐私权，并且经常受到法规的约束，这些法规要求必须采用选择性政策来收集和使用个人信息，正如几项研究所表明的那样，这限制了它们的采用。该项目采用了一种新颖的方法，通过利用个人携带的移动的设备与Wi-Fi基础设施之间的连接事件，使组织能够减轻COVID-19在其场所的传播。计划中的方法有几个优点。首先，它从组织的角度出发，旨在帮助大大小小的组织通过利用网络数据（已经由其网络基础设施生成）来保护员工的安全并确保其场所的安全。其次，它是分散的，即，它不是授权/信任诸如移动的OS公司之类的少数组织，而是授权组织承担在其场所实施安全措施的共同责任。第三，它提供了一个完全保护隐私的解决方案，该解决方案基于计算和信息安全的密码学，具有强大的安全特性，可确保个人隐私，包括可能被暴露或携带者的隐私。这将防止任何实体违反个人意愿滥用收集的数据。第四，它基于现有Wi-Fi基础设施已经生成的连接事件，并且不需要网络用户下载任何应用程序和/或提供显式权限（已知这会限制采用）。最后，它提供了一种实现技术的途径，不仅用于接触追踪，而且使组织能够意识到其政策/策略的有效性，例如社交距离，消毒/清洁时间表等。计划的方法建立在几项创新之上，包括（a）用于清洁嘈杂的Wi-Fi连接数据以开发占用模型的新算法，（B）新的加密解决方案，以实现对加密的Wi-Fi连接数据（从移动的设备收集的）的隐私保护数据分析和查询，以生成一系列信息--例如，遵守社交距离政策的程度、空间内的人员流动和暴露热点，（c）设计一系列与COVID-19相关的应用程序，帮助组织确保其场所内人员的安全。这些应用程序包括可公开访问的组织门户/仪表板和与利益相关者合作开发的基于订阅的警报技术（例如，UCI campus administration）。 该解决方案的部署和测试将在校园范围内进行，特别关注该技术如何使大学领导层能够确定重新开放研究实验室的战略，同时保持所有参与者的健康和安全，并遵循公共卫生当局的适用授权。预计该项目将作为一种工具，向个人和科学家提供有关病毒传播和传播的信息和教育，并将有助于在组织层面制定流程和行动，以减缓COVID-19的传播。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Contact tracing has emerged as a key mitigation strategy to prevent the spread of pandemics such as COVID-19. Recently, several efforts have been initiated to track individuals, their movements, and interactions using technologies such as Bluetooth beacons, cellular data records, and smartphone applications. Such solutions can be intrusive, potentially violate individual privacy rights and are often subject to regulations that mandate the need for opt-in policies to gather and use personal information which, as several studies have shown, limits their adoption. This project takes a novel approach to empower organizations to mitigate spread of COVID-19 at their premises by exploiting connection events between mobile devices carried by individuals and the Wi-Fi infrastructure. There are several advantages of the planned approach. First, it takes an organizational perspective and is intended to help organizations, small and large, keep employees safe and ensure safety on their premises by exploiting network data (already being generated by their network infrastructures). Second, it is decentralized, i.e., instead of empowering/trusting a small number of organizations such as mobile OS companies, it empowers organizations to assume joint responsibility to implement safety measures at their premises. Third, it offers a fully privacy-preserving solution based on computationally and informationally secure cryptography with strong security properties guaranteeing privacy of individuals, including those who might be exposed or carriers. This will prevent misuse of the data collected by any entity against the will of the individuals. Fourth, it is based on connectivity events already generated by existing Wi-Fi infrastructure and does not require users of the network to either download any application and/or give explicit permissions (which is known to limit adoption). Finally, it offers a path to implement technology not just for contact tracing but empowers organizations with awareness about effectiveness of their policies/strategies such as social distancing, disinfecting/cleaning schedules, etc. The planned approach is built upon several innovations including (a) new algorithms for cleaning noisy Wi-Fi connectivity data to develop models of occupancy, (b) new cryptographic solutions to implement privacy-preserving data analytics and queries over encrypted Wi-Fi connectivity data (collected from mobile devices), to generate a range of information -- e.g., level of adherence to social distancing policies, flow of people in spaces, and exposure hotspots, (c) design of a range of COVID-19 relevant applications that help organizations ensure safety of individuals on their premises. Such applications include publicly accessible organizational portals/dashboards and subscription-based alerting technologies developed in concert with stakeholder (e.g., UCI campus administration). Deployment and testing of the solution will be done at campus scale, particularly focusing on how the technology can empower the university leadership to determine strategies for reopening research labs while maintaining health and safety of all involved and follow the applicable mandates of the public health authorities. It is expected that the project will serve as a vehicle to inform and educate both individuals and scientists about virus transmission and spread and will contribute to the development of processes and actions at the organizational level to mitigate spread of COVID-19.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.