Logically, one of the chief institutions of the biopolitical state is public health. Data are the lifeblood of what Michel Foucault called the biopolitical state, which governs by maximizing life and sustaining populations rather than by threatening violence and imposing death, as earlier regimes had done. I have no beef with data collection per se. In 2020, Onfido called its immunity passport in development the “linchpin of a new normality in a post-COVID19 society.” This year, the company’s chief privacy officer (an Orwellian job title if ever there was one) told Biometric Update that proven immunity to the virus du jour might become a “basic permission attribute.” A Swedish company has introduced a vaccine certification microchip that can be implanted under the skin. It would be naïve to assume these networks would not be linked. The British tech firm Onfido envisions a seamless EU-wide identify verification, or IDV, system for online gambling, telemedicine, car rentals, electronic voting, “and more.” Scientists in academe and industry are working on a global biodata repository. One industry analyst predicts the global biometrics market will grow 15 percent annually, reaching nearly $105 billion by 2028. When biometric data - bodily attributes digitized - are married to surveillance technology, both the potential for profit and the ambitions of the techno-futurists inflate without limit. Will President Joe Biden use the passport to enforce his federal employee vaccine mandate? Then what? Once biodata are collected and filed, cautioned Hamid Kahn of the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, which organizes in Los Angeles’s poorest and most policed communities, “there’s no delete button.” Experience with the Excelsior Pass has “accelerated our thinking about digital governments,” said the architect of the program. Along with IBM, the designer, state bureaucrats are “exploring how the platform could be retrofitted to verify other types of records and credentials,” according to Vox. New York, for one, is not expecting to mothball the technology when Covid wanes. But governments are far from unanimous even on such basics as whether you need to show the pass to enter a bar - much less on how long and by whom our intimate information will be held, owned, or overseen. International bodies including the World Health Organization, the EU, and the International Chamber of Commerce are crafting regulatory standards. Every government introducing a vaccine certification vows that their use is voluntary and no personal information will be held beyond its necessity. But we should go into it with our eyes open.Įvidence supports the detractors’ suspicions. In the end, we may decide we want this thing. What else am I - are we - trading away? There’s no doubt something like the vaccine passport is here for good, beyond Covid. So I too am bartering shreds of my personal data for brief furloughs from the cage. I’ve handed my paper vaccine card to a dozen gatekeepers, but I’m not getting New York’s Excelsior Pass. Needless to say, I want to do everything - or at least go to the movies. Normally I’d rather have the mark of the beast tattooed on my forehead than write these words, but: Marjorie is not entirely wrong. Marjorie Taylor Greene called the passport “Biden’s mark of the beast.” This digital ID is going to expand to all aspects of your life.” Georgia Republican Rep. This is just the first step to get you conditioned to accepting government restrictions in your daily life via your mobile phone. “They are not planning on removing vax passports once introduced. “Spoiler alert,” tweeted British DJ, record producer, and anti-vaccine conspiracy-monger Lange. states have banned the passes, and hashtags like #NoVaccinePassports are proliferating on both sides of the Atlantic. Not everybody is as nonchalant as Jack or as gung-ho as the PM. If you’ve got a vaccine pass, you can do everything,” she announced, flashing a friendly shark grin. New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern heralded her country’s My Vaccine Pass as the keycard to the kingdom. Internationally, the EU and a growing number of countries are adopting them, from repressive regimes like Bahrain to democracies like Denmark. The Biden administration announced last spring that it would wrangle them under national standards but so far it hasn’t. Led by New York, California, and Louisiana, as many as 30 states are rolling them out. The information is usually mosaicked in a QR code, read by a proprietary scanner, and linked to a government registry. The digital Covid vaccination certification, or “passport,” is a mobile app that instantaneously affirms the vaccinated status, Covid test results, birth date, gender, and/or other identifiers of its holder. Related Cuomo’s Covid-19 Vaccine Passport Leaves Users Clueless About Privacy
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