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Title: Privacy-preserving contact tracing probably isn’t

Speaker: Vanessa Teague, Thinking Cybersecurity and the Australian National University

For the Talk slides Please click here
For the talk Video on YouTube please click here

Time: 10:15– 11:15 (Israel, UTC+03:00)
08:15 – 09:15 (UK, UTC+01:00)
03:15 – 04:15 (EDT UTC-04:00)
17:15 – 18:15 (AEST UTC+10:00)

Abstract: In the past year we’ve seen the sudden growth of a previously mostly-unknown application of cryptography: privacy-preserving exposure detection. The tension between notifying the exposed people and preserving the privacy of their face-to-face contacts seems like just the sort of challenge cryptography should be good for. However, despite some amazing design and engineering, there are still some important problems associated with just about every known solution. I’ll review what I know about the pros and cons of different approaches and discuss what problems can be solved and which seem intractable. [This abstract is deliberately left vague because it’s likely that a month is long enough for something completely new to have arisen between abstract-writing time and talk-giving time.]

Short Bio: My name is Vanessa Teague. I’m a cryptographer living and working on Wurundjeri land in Southeastern Australia (near Melbourne). I am interested in cryptographic protocols that support a free and democratic society. I work on openly-available research and open source software for supporting democratic decisionmaking and empowering ordinary people to make choices about their own data.