In Lieu of Privacy: Anonymous Contact Tracing

TL;DR

This paper introduces Tracer Tokens, a hardware-based privacy-preserving contact tracing protocol that efficiently traces disease spread through proximity networks and can notify many users simultaneously, surpassing current methods.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel hardware token system for privacy-preserving contact tracing that enables rapid, large-scale user notifications using subnetworks and the Exposure Notification protocol.

Findings

Tracer Tokens effectively trace various diseases via proximity networks.

The protocol can notify up to n^n users in parallel.

It offers faster information dissemination than existing contact tracing methods.

Abstract

We present Tracer Tokens, a hardware token of privacy-preserving contact tracing utilizing Exposure Notification \cite{GAEN} protocol. Through subnetworks, we show that any disease spread by proximity can be traced such as seasonal flu, cold, regional strains of COVID-19, or Tuberculosis. Further, we show this protocol to notify $n^n$ users in parallel, providing a speed of information unmatched by current contact tracing methods.