Re: [saag] Interest COVID-19 'passport' standardization?

[Volker Birk <[e-mail]>]

On Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 10:40:13PM +0200, Harry Halpin wrote:
> While I support your sentiments (in fact, I warned against the persistence
> and abuse of COVID-19 related infrastructure as soon as the pandemic hit
> [1]) and do note that the COVID-19 passports have already happened in most
> countries, particularly in the EU. If they were built with open source and
> open international standards, with actual privacy and security, then it
> would be harm minimization.

Dear Harry,

thank you for taking this serious! But I fear you're mistaken. Let me
explain:

The major problem is not the passport itself. It is who checks it in
which situation: commercial enterprises checking access to cultural
events, but as we saw in Israel while the test also to food supply and
education.

So it will be a corporation deciding if you get education for your kids
and if you're qualified to buy food.

Let's illustrate this with a live example:

Even if you're willing to take your vaccine and you're compliant with
all government rules, what if you're rejected at the gate in spite of
this?

Then you can go to court and sue a commercial enterprise for doing this
mistake – or for abusing their power, because you may be just a person
the owners dislike. Then you can sue them over years. And while this
time you cannot bring your kids to school and you cannot go to a
supermarket and buy food.

Sorry, this is way too much power to the wrong people.

While the pandemic the super rich became so much richer. And the
corporations' shares went through the roof.

It must be enough feeding them now. We need to take care of all those
people, who lost their business and who lost their loved ones in the
pandemic. Creating a power tool to suppress all resistance to the
government and handing over this tool to the corporate world will not
help here. And unfortunately, it does not matter how much good will and
intentions will be spend on this.

Yours,
VB.
-- 
Volker Birk, p≡p project
mailto:[e-mail]
https://pep.software