"Safe Aid: Protecting Privacy in Humanitarian Operations"

EPFL researchers collaborated with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to develop a privacy-preserving humanitarian aid distribution system. The system's design uses tokens to decentralize the storage and processing of recipient data, thus reducing the risk of harm. It also involves advanced cryptography to facilitate accountability. Humanitarian organizations help and protect victims of violence, famine, and natural disasters. Distributing supplies such as food is a crucial aspect of their work. Aid distribution has traditionally been supported by paper-based lists, which, while practical, do not scale well and are sometimes easy to bypass. Humanitarian organizations consider digital solutions as a promising means of addressing these issues, but to date, these solutions have relied on collecting large quantities of recipient data. This could endanger the safety of recipients and complicate the relationship between humanitarian organizations and local authorities. Moreover, ethically, it is questionable whether collecting the personal information of vulnerable individuals is acceptable, given the risks it poses to them. Researchers from the EPFL's Security and Privacy Engineering Lab (SPRING) in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) worked with the ICRC Data Protection Office for over 12 months to further understand the humanitarian context. This article continues to discuss the new privacy-preserving humanitarian aid distribution system. 

EPFL reports "Safe Aid: Protecting Privacy in Humanitarian Operations"