According to Coalition Network’s co-founder and president Micha Benoliel, the Bluetooth- and cryptography-based design respects strict privacy rules, including compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). “We wanted to protect people and those they come into contact with by helping their smartphones exchange information in a way that doesn’t reveal their identity or any of their private information,” Benoliel said.
Similarly, a consortium led by MIT developed the Private Kit app, which redacts and anonymizes a coronavirus patient’s personal health information while still enabling their phone to broadcast a location trail to nearby Bluetooth users.
In Europe, the Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing (PEPP-PT) initiative is developing standards, technology and services that enable a scalable, interoperable software system for mobile-based contact tracing that prioritizes user privacy and works across borders. And in North America, Canada-based software studio Myplanet has created a fund to support independent developers in their efforts to create better, more standardized open-source tools for digital contact tracing.
“Right now, there are a lot of solutions that are competing with each other and a lot of holes, and everybody is trying to recreate the wheel,” said Myplanet’s managing director of ventures Greg Fields, who also leads the firm’s new digital contact tracing lab. “We’re looking at ways to pull from what’s been solved already and share those practices to speed up development and help everything work more easily together.”