Global Distributed Tracking of Supplies via Free-libre Open Source Cryptography Obviating Authentication

Abstract

In higher-income countries, manufacturers, processors, and logistics managers of life-affecting goods such as food, medicine, and medical equipment are required to document product life cycles from factory, to warehouse, and eventually to the end-user. However, some low and middle-income countries (LMICs) do not have logistic management systems or regulatory agencies overseeing processing standards. Global aid shipments may be impossible to track in low-resource environments, and bad actors may flood markets with counterfeit products. Global Distributed Tracking (GDT) provides a novel solution: anyone handling an object may securely and anonymously document the object by uploading media, shipping manifests, location receipts, and quality reports without authentication. This encrypted, time-stamped ``provenance becomes a discoverable self-audit, granting the end-user trust through transparency. GDT allows an end-user to directly report adverse events pertaining to an object. This feature creates automatic fulfillment of some FDA and EU regulatory requirements for medical device distribution.