Just some stuff about me.
Here's my dotfiles repository.
What links here:
Why you should care about NOT having a vaccine passport
there are two different, separate issues here, and they are both valid. The first is not wanting to take the vaccine. This is a valid standpoint, but basically solely an ethics question and a separate debate. The second is not wanting to present identification when entering all/a lot/some businesses, and this is the one I will talk about. The media/politicians will try to lump both together, but they are very distinct issues.
To be able to admit you, your code has to be checked against a server-stored token, to prove your passport is legitimate. Whenever a request is performed against the server, it follows a log will be produced of that identification request. Something like “Mr John Smith, at Walmart SW LA, 03/03/2021, 3:15pm, does he have a vaccine/negative test/etc.?”, to which the server replies “yes/no”.
“The passport does not have my name associated”:
the police has been able to arrest people by using inference attacks. These sort of attacks are very powerful, it is detective work but on a digital scale. Maybe to the passport you are just “John Doe”, but you are the John Doe that checks-in every day to workplace X, that goes every week to Starbucks Y at a small town, that goes every month to state Z. It’s not hard for law enforcement to then go around and find out who you are if they know your routine. You have nothing to hide? Until you are in the wrong place at the wrong time again.
“We are already tracked everywhere”: Sure. Visa tracks you. Mastercard as well. Facebook. Google. Your phone provider. But each has their own system. The police can request data from each one of them, which is a bureaucratic process. Banking in particular has old systems. And it’s not all put together neatly in a system built from the ground up, where a simple query can show everything a given person has done throughout his life.
“I have nothing to hide”: Until whatever you did that was legal and allowed is not anymore. Royalty and even landowners in general had nothing to hide in Russia until 1917. Plus you could be at the wrong place at the wrong time and be accused of something you did not do.
Related: Singapore reveals Covid privacy data available to police