Pan-European project seeks to create standards for app-based contact tracing

Led by Germany's Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute for Telecoms, technologists and scientists from at least eight countries, are working on a proximity-based contact tracing technology that complies with GDPR. The Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing project (PEPP-PT) is intended to leverage smartphones to help disrupt the spread of infection by notifying individuals when their smartphones are near enough to to that of another person to carry out a Bluetooth handshake - thereby implementing contact tracing without putting in place Chinese-style surveillance. Recognising that Europe already has numerous contact tracing projects, PEPP-PT seeks to offer a set of standards, technology, and services that countries and developers can plug into in order to provide a bloc-wide approach.

Source: https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/01/an-eu-coalition-of-techies-is-backing-a-privacy-preserving-standard-for-covid-19-contacts-tracing/

Writer: Natasha Lomas
Publication: TechCrunch