Safe contact tracing for COVID-19: A method without privacy breach using functional encryption techniques based-on spatio-temporal trajectory data

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has spread all over the globe. In the absence of a vaccine, a small number of countries have managed to control the diffusion of viruses by early detection and early quarantine. South Korea, one of the countries which have kept the epidemics well-controlled, has opened the infected patients’ trajectory to the public. Such a reaction has been regarded as an effective method, however, serious privacy breach cases have been issued in South Korea. Furthermore, some suspected contacts have refused to take infection tests because they are afraid of being exposed. To solve this problem, we propose a privacy-preserving contact tracing method based on spatio-temporal trajectory which can be practically used in many quarantine systems. In addition, we develop a system to visualize the contact tracing workflow.