Wouter Lueks (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

Abstract. Ever since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a push to deploy technology as a means of pandemic mitigation. In this talk Wouter Lueks focuses on two such systems. Both aim to notify users that have been exposed to somebody with COVID-19 and that should therefore take precautions such as quarantining or getting a test. The first system, designed by DP3T, notifies users that were close enough for long enough to a positive person. The second, CrowdNotifier, instead notifies users that where in an indoor space (e.g., bar, restaurant, lecture room) with a positive person. Deploying such systems comes with security and privacy risks. Especially when rolling them out to large fractions of the population, or when making them de facto mandatory, e.g., to go to a restaurant. In this talk Wouter Lueks will discuss these risks, and explain how he and his team designed, implemented and deployed both systems to mitigate these risks.

Biography. Wouter Lueks is a postdoctoral researcher at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He designs, builds and deploys privacy-friendly systems. To do so, he combines applied cryptography, privacy and requirements modeling, and clever systems engineering. He has worked on several systems such as IRMA for anonymous authentication and a secure document search system for investigative journalists called „DatashareNetwork“. Recently he works on designing, analyzing, and implementing digital proximity and presence tracing systems. 

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