@misc{RSZ23,
author = { R. L. Rivest and
M.C. Schiefelbein and
M.A. Zissman and
J. Bay and
E. Bugnion and
J. Finnerty and
I. Liccardi and
B. Nelson and
A.S. Norige and
E.H. Shen and
J. Wanger and
R. Yahalom and
J.D. Alekseyev and
C. Brubaker and
L. Ferretti and
C. Ishikawa and
M. Raykova and
B. Schlaman and
R.X. Schwartz and
E. Sudduth and
S. Tessaro},
title = {{Automated Exposure Notification for COVID-19}},
date = {2023-02-14},
urla = {LL-link},
urlb = {MIT-DSPACE-CSAIL-link},
urlc = {PACT website},
note = {This report is both a Lincoln Lab Technical Report (TR-1288)
and a CSAIL Technical Report. It has two URLs, which point to copies of the
same report.},
abstract = {
Private Automated Contact Tracing (PACT1) was a collaborative team and effort formed during the
beginning of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. PACT’s mission was to enhance
contact tracing in pandemic response by designing exposure-detection functions in personal digital
communication devices that have maximal public health utility while preserving privacy.
\par
PACT was led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), MIT Internet Policy Research Initiative, Massachusetts General
Hospital Center for Global Health and MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL). It included close
collaborators from Boston University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, MIT Media Lab, MITRE,
the
Weizmann Institute, and a number of public and private research and development centers. The PACT team
was a partnership among cryptographers, physicians, privacy experts, scientists, and engineers.
\par
The PACT project members viewed the project as cooperative and synergistic with similar projects
elsewhere in academia and in industry. Our goal was to advance the science, engineering, and public-health
technology to help fight the common virus enemy, rather than to aim for credit to the exclusion of credit to
others.
\par
The PACT effort began in mid-March 2020 with the development of the PACT protocol specification,
which is a simple, decentralized approach for using personal digital communication devices for automating
exposure detection using Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) signaling. Version 0.1 of the PACT protocol was
released on 8 April 2020. [1] The Apple and Google implementation of automated exposure notification
(AEN) services are largely consistent with the PACT protocol and were released shortly afterward. Initial
proof of concept technology demonstrations were completed by MIT LL around the same time.
},
}