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In 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic tore through and infected millions of people, digital contact tracing tools were quickly adopted by many countries around the world as a tool for combating the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
In addition to existing contact tracing protocols such as Exposure Notification, DP-3T and TCN, Singapore developed its own centralized protocol known as BlueTrace, which was eventually used in the TraceTogether mobile applications and hardware tokens.
Naturally, members of the Singaporean public had privacy concerns regarding the use of the TraceTogether system, in 2021, controversy struck when it was revealed that the Singapore Police Force had used TraceTogether data for police investigations, despite promises that TraceTogether data will only be used for the purposes of contact tracing.
In this presentation, we take a look at the implementation of TraceTogether, the BlueTrace protocol as well as the TraceTogether token. We also discuss alternative implementations, as well as privacy concerns regarding the TraceTogether system.