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Bluetooth based Proximity, Multi-hop Analysis and Bi-directional
Trust: Epidemics and More ∗
Ramesh Raskar1and Sai Sri Sathya2
1Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2S20.AI
Abstract
In this paper, we propose a trust layer on top of Bluetooth and similar wireless communication
technologies that can form mesh networks. This layer as a protocol enables computing trust scores based
on proximity and bi-directional transfer of messages in multiple hops across a network of mobile devices.
We describe factors and an approach for determining these trust scores and highlight its applications
during epidemics such as COVID-19 through improved contact-tracing, better privacy and verification
for sensitive data sharing in the numerous Bluetooth and GPS based mobile applications that are being
developed to track the spread.
1 Introduction
The modern day pandemic, COVID-19 has turned the lives of people all over the globe upside down and has
pushed experts to panic-hunt for quick-fix solutions in practically every field: healthcare services, epidemi-
ology, social services, economics or policy. It is no wonder, in fact practical, that several corporations and
organizations are coming up with solutions based on GPS and Bluetooth for contact tracing as the pandemic
reaches the community phase of transmission in most countries. The latest of such being the announcement
of Google and Apple joining hands for developing Bluetooth-based contact tracing technology.
While the urgency of a solution is well-warranted, we do understand that Bluetooth and related prox-
imity technologies alone are not enough to solve the problems of contact tracing and that they require
widespread adoption to be effective which could be very challenging in many countries. Hence, a conscious
implementation of the same would go a long way in maintaining the effectiveness of the solution and prevent
any negative repercussions that may arise once the solutions are adopted and implemented on-ground. In
this paper, we propose the development of a trust layer as a protocol on top of proximity technologies like
Bluetooth that is bi-directional, recursive and mimics the human-like trusts scenarios between devices in a
way that adjusts trust scores based on their previous and current interactions and can transit in multiple
hops. This can increase the effectiveness of contact tracing when there is mass adoption, enhance privacy
and enable contextual message-passing based on proximity information during pandemics.
∗This paper is based on our work led by Ramesh Raskar and Sai Sri Sathya at Facebook in 2016
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2019139630A1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190215753A1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190213266A1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3512232A1/
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190207819A1/
2 Background
The interpersonal human interactions tend to be subjective and the level of trust we repose in someone
is revised as we continue to have more and more interactions with them. As machines aspire to acquire
human intelligence and improve on their delivery of services to humans, they are far away from mimicking
humanly intuitive thinking. However, in the digital world, trust is mostly binary and governed by keys,
passwords and pins which are highly dependent on whether a person possesses ‘information’ rather than
‘trustworthiness’. Hence, it is difficult to create digital interactions in the physical world based on partial
trust such as sharing sensitive information, payments, etc.
Our approach is novel in demonstrating the physics of digital relations based on trust evolving in the
real world. We propose that all digitally connected systems embed this trust protocol layer to determine
trust scores that adjust over-time and enable information transfer through a multi-hop peer-to-peer wireless
network based on trust.
3 Overview
Our system is based on proximity over space and time to establish digital trust between users using their
mobile devices connected via wireless mesh networks. When a mobile device identifies a trigger for an
offline digital communication with one or more devices, it discovers the other devices in proximity using a
discovery protocol. For each discovered peer, the device assesses whether the discovered peer is previously
known and whether it is directly reachable over the wireless network. It then determines a trust score for
each discovered peer based on proximity and related factors and performs digital communications with one
or more peers with trust scores higher than a threshold for transmission. The system is bi-directional in
nature. So correspondingly, each receiver also computes a trust score for the sender and can decode the
message only if the trust score is higher than the threshold for reception. Figure 1 illustrates message passing
between two devices, as detailed in section 4.6.
4 Approach
Following subsections explain the architecture of the system to enable communication between two devices.
A triggering event initiates a proximity-based communication between two or more devices. The data
captured during the initial interaction is analysed by the devices in various ways to compute initial trust
scores. The trust scores are adjusted based on the communication and physical interactions captured and
form the basis for any information exchange that takes place between the two devices.
The communicating devices have one or more sensors that can capture physical interactions of the users.
These devices may also communicate with multiple communication peers through different wireless networks
simultaneously.
4.1 Triggers for Offline Communication
The triggering event for a device to initiate an offline communication with other devices may simply be an
instruction from the user. For instance, the user of a mobile device may detect that no network infrastructure
is reachable or that multiple peers are in physical proximity to one another. This detection becomes a trigger
for initiating an offline peer to peer communication session. For example, when a user is on a plane, the
mobile device(s) she is carrying should be in the airplane mode. Thus, the mobile devices on the plane are
not capable of accessing the Internet.
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Figure 1: Message passing between two devices based on computed trust scores
The devices only need to exchange digital data among themselves. In this scenario, the devices form a
wireless mesh network and exchange messages between themselves without routing the messages through
the Internet.
4.2 Discovery
Once an offline digital communication is triggered, the user’s device discovers the other mobile device(s) in
proximity. Any existing discovery protocol such as the Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) discovery protocol can
be re-used for this purpose. It can further identify the mobile devices that are interested in communicating
with it on a particular topic to initiate a peer-to-peer communication session based on the information in
their advertising packets or retrieved using an online social network that the one or more peers are a part
of including the primary user initiating the communication. For example, a user enters a coffee shop and
wants to chat about coffee while he is waiting for his friends. Either the people in the coffee shop could
broadcast this information or he could connect to a social network and retrieve a list of devices mapped to
users in the coffee shop who would be interested to chat about coffee or both. This would prompt the user
to send local invitations to the users identified through offline and online discovery channels.
4.3 Types of Communication Sessions
•Offline communication session: where a device exchanges messages with one or more mobile
devices without routing through the Internet.
•Online communication sessions in proximity: where a mobile device exchanges messages with
one or more mobile devices by routing the messages through the Internet. Though messages are
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routed through the Internet, the participating mobile devices and their corresponding users could be
in proximity of each other. Therefore, in such a case(s), proximity-based trust is utilized for authorizing
the communications.
•Hybrid communication session: where one or more participating mobile devices are not in the
same local network or directly connected with each other via the internet. To establish communication,
mobile devices having local communication paths could route messages through one or more peers
connected to the Internet.
As devices use low power radio for the offline communications, not all the devices may be directly
accessible to each other even if they are in close proximity. In such cases messages are passed in multiple
hops through nearby devices. For example, for two devices A and B; when device A is not reachable from
device B, device B can send a message to device A through a third device that is reachable from device
B and is able to reach device A. When only a portion of participants is capable of accessing the Internet,
they act as backhaul points and route messages from / to the other participants to / from nodes outside
the mesh network. Device A may communicate with a second mobile device (device B) over the Bluetooth
network while communicating with a third mobile device over the Wi-Fi network. A back-haul point can be
one of the participating mobile devices. It can also be a stationary infrastructure device including a Wi-Fi
access point.
Additionally, devices could be associated with one or more social-networking system(s). In each of the
above cases, the mobile devices could utilize data available in a data store of one or more social-networking
system(s) when the mobile devices discover each other and maintain the communication session as they
move.
4.4 Analysing Proximity Data and Physical Interactions
Proximity information and physical interactions are captured through wireless transceivers and on device
sensors such as microphone, a camera, etc. Physical interactions between users could include conversations,
handshakes, hands waving, and any other human interactions that can be captured by any available sensors.
To process the data and compute trust scores, on-device machine learning or deep learning (ML/DL) models
can be used. If the device is connected to the internet, cloud-based servers can be additionally used to process
the data.
4.5 Factors for determining Trust Scores
Once a device (A) has identified a communication peer (device B) following factors can be used for deter-
mining trust scores as shown in figure 2:
•Previous sessions: If device A and B have interacted within a specified time-frame, then device A
would use the previously computed trust score for device B as an initial trust score.
•Mutual peers: Trust scores are uniquely computed and stored between each pair of devices in either
direction. This enables devices to compute an initial score based on the scores computed by mutual
peers in the past. For instance, if device B is not previously known to device A, device A can obtain
and compute an initial trust score from its own trusted peers that have also interacted with and
therefore have computed trust scores for device B.
•Common interests: When both device A and device B have explicitly indicated common interests
or are determined using privacy-friendly approaches, then device A determines an input to the trust
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model for device B based on the common interests. The common interest could be learned during the
discovery phase both online and offline.
•Common data or applications: When both device A and device B have common data or applica-
tions installed, device A determines an input weight for computing the trust score for device B based
on the common data or application.
•Proximity data: The proximity details captured by the wireless sensors is an important factor in
determining trust scores. The inputs to the model vary in a non-linear fashion depending on the time,
location, frequency and how far apart and how long are devices in proximity to one another during
each interaction.
•Sensed physical Interaction: Inputs to the trust model are also assigned based on the type and
details of any physical interaction between the users captured by their respective on-device sensors.
Figure 2: Factors for determining an initial trust score and adjusting based on proximity and interaction
data
The trust score and model to determine the scores between any two communicating peers can change
over time. For example, at the beginning; device A has a certain trust score for device B based on some
or all of the above factors. As device A and device B keep exchanging messages, the trust score for device
B can increase and additional factors could be included in determining future scores. On the other hand,
when device B has been away for a long period of time, device A may lower the trust score for device B
based on the model. The trust scores are computed bi-directionally. Because they can be modeled with
different evolution and decay functions and include factors that depend on the nature of communication
and physical interactions, the scores could be asymmetric.
Further, profiles of trust scores can be created based on context such as nature and process of discovery,
interaction type, external events, communication channels, message data, etc.
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4.6 Message Passing and Decoding
The trust score determined on mobile devices can be used for secure message passing. Device A can issue
a security key to device B. Device B uses the security key for decrypting messages based on the trust
scores between two devices. Figure 1 illustrates the process of message delivery with authorization based
on computed trust scores.
When device A sends a security key, it can set a minimum required trust score of the intended receiver
for the message. Device A first verifies that the current trust score for device B satisfies the threshold for
the message to be transmitted. Device A then sends the message to device B, if the score is above the
threshold.
When device B receives the message from device A it determines whether the current trust score for
device A satisfies a threshold for the message to be received. In response to the determination, device B
decodes the message using the security key received.
During the process of message delivery, in addition to setting a threshold for transmission, device A
may also set a threshold trust score for reception which would then determine whether the message can be
decrypted by the user based on the computed trust score on device B.
5 Applications in Epidemics
The system of establishing trust-based scores can have multi-faceted applications especially in epidemics.
Epidemics like COVID-19 can be contained through mapping of peers of infected patients, facilitate safe
and informed information exchange of patients and privacy-enabled spread of information among individuals
regarding potential susceptibility to the disease.
5.1 Contact Tracing - Forward and Backward
Trust scores are fundamentally calculated as a function of space (proximity) and time which is the same
as communicable diseases that result in large outbreaks. When the majority of the population has this
protocol enabled using Bluetooth based devices combined with GPS to provide location information, the
bi-directional, transitive and asymmetric nature of trust can help in contact tracing, both forward and
backward. The scores can be directly used as a proxy in determining transmission rates in disease SEIR
models. Once sufficient infected cases have been found, backward tracing can be done using communication
based on reception trust score thresholds for specific interaction types that result in disease spreading to
ultimately locate patient zero.
Frequency of interactions and spread of trust scores across peers can further help in locating super
spreaders or isolated groups.
5.2 Sensitive Data Sharing with Authorized Personals
Contact tracing solutions require infected patients to reveal their sensitive personal health and location
information to Government authorities and healthcare providers. While numerous privacy-preserving tech-
nologies are emerging to ensure that minimal sharing of sensitive information can still provide maximum
utility, most of these technologies do not fully protect from data forwarding or leaking to unauthorized
people.
Trust scores are computed based on mutual peer scores in a transitive manner. This can enable indi-
viduals to verify the authority of government or healthcare personnels through a profile based on message
type that has been updated by peer groups. For e.g. when doctors interact with patients, although the
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interaction might last for a short time, they continue to build their trust scores for exchanging health data
as a profile as they see more patients. New patients can set a high reception trust score threshold for
health data which is sensitive.In the discovery process they can immediately identify doctors as peers in
the network that have high trust scores for health data profile based on previous interactions with other
patients. Only these peers who are doctors can then decode the information on their end preventing any
unauthorised access.
5.3 Privacy-enabled Contextual Information Spreading
One of the important functions of the Government and health authorities during a pandemic is to alert
and spread awareness among people who could potentially be at risk based on tested individuals and their
contact traces. This must be done carefully to avoid panic by ensuring appropriate messages are issued to
the public.
Proximity-based trust scoring provides both varying degrees of relationships around people and disease
susceptibility based on their interactions. This degree of separation from the infected could be effectively
used for alerting with different levels of messaging revealing individual or just location information. For e.g.
people with highest level of trust scores could be close family or colleagues of the patient who should be
informed with specific messaging whereas people with lower trust scores who represent infrequent visitors
or passers-by could still potentially be at risk but can be notified at a locality-risk level and encouraged to
get tested without revealing any personally identifiable information (PII) of the infected individuals.
6 Conclusion
Proximity-based trust protocol enables utilizing human-like discretionary trust as a factor in digitally con-
nected systems using wireless technologies such as Bluetooth. The trust scores change over-time, are bi-
directional, asymmetric, transitive and non-linear between users computed in mobile and interconnected
user-held devices. While these properties govern human interaction, behaviours and mobility patterns,
in turn pandemic spread of communicable diseases, they can also be used as effective tools in the digital
medium to contain such diseases when adopted at scale. We also believe such a protocol can be useful in
many other real-world applications where transfer and exchange of goods and information is implicitly or
explicitly driven by trust such as private messaging, payments, discovering new friends, etc.
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