Covid Watch
Covid Watch was 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]
Formation
February 19, 2020[2]
Tina White[3]
Stanford, CA
nonprofit
Tucson, AZ
COVID-19 app solution using GAEN or TCN Protocols
Tina White
James Petrie
Rhys Fenwick
Zsombor Szabo
200+ active
Covid Watch[8] began as an independent research collaboration between students at Stanford University, United States and the University of Waterloo, Canada and it 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 had 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.[4][15]
Covid Watch also built a fully open source mobile app for sending anonymous exposure alerts first using their own TCN Protocol in April 2020[16] and later using the nearly identical protocol within the 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 August 2020, the app launched publicly for a phased roll-out in the state of Arizona.[21][22][23] Covid Watch volunteers and staff also collaborated with the University of Arizona on research to improve the estimation of infection risk from anonymous Bluetooth data to better inform private quarantine recommendations.[24]
At the end of 2020, the Covid Watch nonprofit closed, but the Covid Watch app and related open source technologies continue to be implemented for public health departments by the WeHealth organization.[25]