Covid Watch

Covid Watch is an open source nonprofit founded in February 2020 with the mission of building mobile technology to fight the COVID-19 pandemic while defending digital privacy.[4] The Covid Watch founders became concerned about emerging, mass surveillance-enabling digital contact tracing technology and started the project to help preserve civil liberties during the pandemic.[5][6][7]

Covid Watch[1]
FormationFebruary 19, 2020 (2020-02-19)[2]
FounderTina White[3]
Founded atStanford, CA
Typenonprofit
HeadquartersTucson, AZ
ProductsCOVID-19 app solution using GAEN or TCN Protocols
ServicesExposure Alerts
Executive Director
Tina White
Founder
James Petrie
Founder
Rhys Fenwick
Founder
Zsombor Szabo
Volunteers
200+ active
Websitehttps://covidwatch.org

Covid Watch[8] started as an independent research collaboration between Stanford University and the University of Waterloo, and was the first team in the world to publish a white paper,[9] develop,[10][11] and open source[12] a fully anonymous Bluetooth exposure alert protocol - the CEN Protocol, later renamed the TCN Protocol - in collaboration with CoEpi in early March 2020.[13] This was followed by the rapid development of very similar decentralized protocols in early April 2020 like DP-3T, PACT,[14] and Google/Apple Exposure Notification.

The Covid Watch team now has over 200 active volunteers from around the world including advisers in public health, epidemiology, privacy, policy, and law from universities like Stanford, Waterloo, UW, UCSF, and Berkeley.[15]

Covid Watch also built a fully open source mobile app for sending anonymous exposure alerts first using the TCN Protocol in April 2020[16] and later using the nearly identical Google/Apple exposure notification (GAEN) framework when the GAEN APIs were released in May 2020.[17][18] Also in May 2020, Covid Watch launched the first calibration and beta testing pilot of the GAEN APIs in the United States at the University of Arizona.[19][20] In Aug 2020, the app launched publicly for a phased roll-out in the state of Arizona.[21][22][23]

History

As the pandemic began its outbreak in North America, on February 19, 2020, Stanford University PhD candidate and DOE CSGF Fellow Tina White made a public Effective Altruism (EA) forum post about researching smartphone technology like GPS to alert people privately of COVID-19 exposure.[24] This post got the attention of James Petrie at University of Waterloo who had started writing an academic paper on Overleaf on February 7, 2020 exploring private, decentralized methods using MAC addresses.[25] The two researchers began the research collaboration between Stanford and Waterloo, which formed into the nonprofit Covid Watch.

Anonymous, decentralized Bluetooth exposure alerts first publicly appeared on March 2, 2020 when CW's James Petrie posted a PDF describing the privacy model in CW public slack channels, shared with researchers and collaborators worldwide.[26] Covid Watch's description of the technology and procedure for anonymous exposure alerts was shared widely on social media[27] and on the original Covid Watch blog written by Rhys Fenwick.[28] On March 10, 2020, Tina White reached out to Apple engineers to describe BLE anonymous contact tracing technology and background issues on iOS.

A description of the CEN Protocol: the first anonymous, decentralized Bluetooth exposure notification protocol to be published online in Covid Watch's whitepaper on 20 March 2020 and open sourced on the Covid Watch github 17 March 2020.

Covid Watch developer Zsombor Szabo built the first open source, decentralized, anonymous exposure alert protocol called the CEN Protocol.[29][30][31] On March 12, 2020, Zsombor Szabo pushed his first commit to GitHub,[32] laying the foundations of the CW app, completing a proof of concept on March 17 and sharing the video of the working technology on YouTube.[33] Finally, on March 20, 2020, the CW team released a White Paper describing the CEN / TCN protocol [34][35] online, sent it to Apple, and shared it among researchers worldwide. 

Covid Watch founder and Stanford PhD Candidate Tina White presented the technology at Stanford HAI's COVID-19 and AI virtual conference on April 1.[36][37][38] After that, Covid Watch began receiving significant news coverage.[39] Covid Watch then helped other groups like the TCN Coalition and MIT SafePaths[40] implement the TCN Protocol within their open source projects to further the development of decentralized technology and foster global interoperability of contact tracing and exposure alerting apps, a key aspect of achieving widespread adoption.[41]

In the same week in early April, three other teams publish decentralized, anonymous Bluetooth protocols. On April 3, 2020, the first DP^3T white paper commit[42] is published along with its first commit on Github.[43] On April 6, Henry de Valence of the Zcash Foundation publishes a comparison of CEN/TCN with the new white paper proposal from DP^3T. [44] On April 9, 2020 the MIT PACT protocol spec[45] authored by Rob Rivest, Ramesh Raskar, Vanessa Teague, and many more cited CW and DP^3T and Nicky Case published a comic describing how the CW and DP^3T Protocols work.[46] Finally, after CW and CoEpi published their reference implementation CEN (TCN) protocol[47] and along with several other teams communicated to Apple the issues they faced regarding a successful exposure notification app, Apple and Google announced their contact tracing API[48] on April 10, 2020.  

On April 28, 2020 CW implemented the TCN protocol in a fully functional anonymous exposure alert app with Android bridging, first available in Apple TestFlight via the Stanford App Store.[49] In May 2020, Covid Watch launched the first calibration and beta testing pilot of the GAEN protocol in the United States at the University of Arizona.[50][51]

References
  1. "Covid Watch". Covid Watch. 2020-02-19. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  2. "COVID-19 Risk Assessment App Idea for Vetting and Discussion". EA Forum. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  3. "Tina White". Professional Website. Retrieved 2020-02-19.
  4. "Covid Watch About Page". Covid Watch. 2020-06-02. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  5. University, Stanford (2020-04-09). "Stanford researchers help develop privacy-focused coronavirus alert app". Stanford News. Retrieved 2020-04-09.
  6. CSGF, DOE (2020-03-31). "Fellow Working to Devise COVID-19 Alert Application". DOE Computational Science Graduate Fellowship. Retrieved 2020-03-31.
  7. Waterloo, University of (2020-04-20). "Coming into contact with COVID". Waterloo Stories. Retrieved 2020-04-20.
  8. "Covid Watch". Covid Watch. 2020-03-20. Retrieved 2020-03-20.
  9. "Covid Watch White Paper". Covid Watch. 2020-03-20. Retrieved 2020-03-20.
  10. "First implementation of anonymous exposure alert protocol". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
  11. "Covid Watch iOS TCN Testflight App". Apple TestFlight. 2020-03-17. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
  12. "Covid Watch Github". Github. 2020-03-17. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
  13. "CoEpi website". CoEpi. 2020-03-17. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
  14. "The PACT protocol specification" (PDF). PACT MIT. 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2020-04-08.
  15. "Covid Watch About Page". Covid Watch. 2020-06-02. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  16. "Covid Watch open source iOS TCN app". Github. 2020-03-17. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
  17. "Covid Watch iOS G/A EN Github Repo". Github. 2020-06-02. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  18. "Covid Watch Github Repo". Github. 2020-03-07. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  19. "UA testing app to trace COVID-19 cases on campus". KOLD News 13. 2020-05-28. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  20. "Online apps likely to play a big role in rebooting UA campus for fall semester". Github. 2020-05-28. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  21. "UArizona and Covid Watch Launch COVID-19 Exposure Notification App". University of Arizona News. 2020-08-18. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  22. "Covid Watch Arizona". App Store. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  23. "Covid Watch Arizona - Apps on Google Play". play.google.com. Retrieved 2020-08-20.
  24. "COVID-19 Risk Assessment App Idea for Vetting and Discussion - EA Forum". forum.effectivealtruism.org. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  25. "Optimal Quarantine". www.overleaf.com. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  26. "ContactTracingUsingSecretNumbers.pdf". www.slack.com. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  27. "Public Facebook Post". Facebook. Retrieved 2020-03-05.
  28. "Covid Watch Bluetooth Primer Blog Post". Internet Archive. 2020-03-07. Archived from the original on 2020-04-10. Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  29. "One victim of COVID-19 pandemic may be privacy rights". JapanTimes. 2020-03-31. Retrieved 2020-03-31.
  30. "What privacy-preserving coronavirus tracing apps need to succeed". VentureBeat. 2020-04-13. Retrieved 2020-04-18.
  31. Shendruk, Amrita Khalid, Amanda. "How Bluetooth could bring digital contact tracing for Covid-19 to billions". Quartz. Retrieved 2020-04-19.
  32. "First commit · covid19risk/covidwatch-ios@f6068b9". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  33. "Covid Watch Demo 3 Devices". YouTube. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  34. White, Tina (June 24, 2020). "Covid Watch White Paper" (PDF). Covid Watch.
  35. "Covid Watch White Paper on Internet Archive". web.archive.org. 2020-03-29. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  36. "Stanford HAI COVID-19 and AI Virtual Conference". Stanford HAI. 2020-04-01. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  37. "Tracking COVID-19 Using Crowdsourced Data: Tina White". Stanford HAI. 2020-04-01. Retrieved 2020-04-01.
  38. "Surveillance, AI, and saving lives top agenda at coronavirus conference". Stanford HAI. 2020-04-02. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  39. "Covid Watch News Coverage". Covid Watch. 2020-06-02. Retrieved 2020-06-02.
  40. "Bluetooth signals from your smartphone could automate Covid-19 contact tracing while preserving privacy". MIT News. 2020-04-08. Retrieved 2020-04-08.
  41. "Initial TCN Coalition commit · TCNCoalition/TCN@1b68b92". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-04-18.
  42. "DP-3T/documents". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  43. "DP-3T/documents". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  44. "Private Contact Tracing Protocols Compared: DP-3T and CEN". Zcash Foundation. 2020-04-06.
  45. Rivest, Ron. "MIT PACT" (PDF).
  46. Case, Nicky. "Comic". ncase.me.
  47. "Add CEN protocol implementation · covid19risk/covidwatch-ios@e79403f". GitHub. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  48. "Apple and Google's Contact Tracing API".
  49. "Join the Covid Watch beta". testflight.apple.com. Retrieved 2020-06-24.
  50. "UA testing app to trace COVID-19 cases on campus". KOLD News 13. 2020-05-28. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
  51. "Online apps likely to play a big role in rebooting UA campus for fall semester". Github. 2020-05-28. Retrieved 2020-05-28.
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