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In Part 1, The BFD | Freedom’s Just Another Word for…Control I outlined our recent experience at a restaurant and being unable to dine there in the absence of a QR code passport despite having Ministry of Health documentation verifying our vaccination status.
As a bit more background, the end-of-year hospitality for our clients had been booked well before the need for the passport. Not wishing to embarrass these people, we agreed to make our vaccine status known so that we could avoid the need for confrontation. We are not strangers to that establishment; indeed, we have done work for them and are on first-name terms with the owner. The aggression with which we were met on entry by the young woman demanding our passport was unacceptable, as was the similar stance taken by a chap at the bar. We had proof of vaccination. They wouldn’t accept it. Hospitality has now been made the fall guy for the government’s single-minded advance to deny us our freedoms and rights via the QR passport.
The digital passport is for many the line in the sand. We won’t use it. We will go elsewhere. We will go to the supermarket and cut out the middleman and eat at home. No problem. However, under the circumstances we found ourselves in, it was very awkward given our wish to not upset clients or staff. But upset them we did.
The digital divide is going to affect many, as the insidious nature of data collection, lack of privacy and lack of security is of enormous concern. The Waikato Hospital data breach is a case in point, where patient information was published on the dark web after a ransomware attack crippled five hospitals’ IT systems in May 2021. Waikato DHB won’t face fines for data breach, but may face liability – Privacy Commissioner | RNZ News
The information was reported to have included bank details, drivers’ licences and passports.
The government’s lack of transparency, their lies, their obfuscation, and their concealment of policies until it suits them makes them entirely untrustworthy. We must not subject ourselves to their surveillance.
Already third-party access is taking place, with Air New Zealand linking to the government passport. John Anthony on 8 December 2021 reported for Stuff: Air New Zealand Airpoints members can link My Vaccine Pass to airline’s app from Thursday | Stuff.co.nz
“Air New Zealand customers will be able to link their My Vaccine Pass with Air New Zealand’s app from Thursday, giving vaccinated customers a more seamless experience when flying domestically, the airline says.”
And the tracer QR code? The Ministry of Health website Integrating other contact tracing apps with NZ COVID Tracer APIs | Ministry of Health NZ notes that “third-party integration with the NZ COVID Tracer app has the potential to improve contact tracing by enabling the users of third-party apps and other technology to exchange digital contact tracing information with the Ministry.”
“In June 2020 the Ministry took the first major step toward integration by releasing data specifications for the official NZ COVID Tracer QR codes. This enabled third-party developers to update their apps to become compatible with the official QR codes, and removed the need for businesses to display multiple codes.
“To be considered for this partnership, developers needed to establish that each user’s location history – or visitor history at locations – is recorded securely, and that no user information would be shared with the Ministry without the user’s consent.”
The QR code password is not simply a barcode, but a barcode on steroids. This is not the benign capture of name, address and vaccination status. If it was, there would be no call for the digital passport.
“Standard QR Codes can hold up to 3Kb of data.”
qrcode.meetheed.com/question7.php
“A barcode is a machine-readable optical label that contains information about the item to which it is attached. In practice, QR codes often contain data for a locator, identifier, or tracker that points to a website or application.”
What is the capacity of a QR code? – Morethingsjapanese.com
The government information about the privacy of the passport information is far from reassuring.
“It is an offence for a business to sell the details from the My Vaccine Pass, or use the details for purposes outside the COVID-19 response.”
“Any personal information collected – for example, that you have been verified – remains subject to the protections in the Privacy Act 2020.”
My Vaccine Pass | Unite against COVID-19 (covid19.govt.nz)
My Vaccine Pass | Unite against COVID-19 (covid19.govt.nz)
Is that in any way reassuring? No. An offence to sell the details. Not an offence to collect them. It is an offence against our privacy that the government is implementing this system in the absence of explanation as to what is collected and why. What else are they deciding behind closed doors to add to collection capacity? All of which can be done (it seems) without us being any the wiser.
Vanessa Teague, cryptography professor and founder of Thinking Cybersecurity, in an ABC Investigations program by Kevin Nguyen, said good intentions weren’t enough.
“A company doesn’t always live up to their promises and, even if they want to, this doesn’t just preclude security problems or accidental data breaches,” she said.
Dr Andrew Chen, BE(Hons)/BCom PGCertCE PhD Auckland, Research Fellow of the University of Auckland, said of the New Zealand passport on 21 November 2021:
“We are still waiting for further details about how the passes are expected to be used under the COVID Protection Framework, as the accompanying legislation has not yet been released, which is also where the vast majority of the ethical concerns might be. But we are reasonably confident that the technology side works and is safe to use.”
newshub.co.nz/home/new-zealand/2021/11/covid-19-kiwis-shouldn-t-be-sharing-their-vaccine-certificates-on-social-media-here-s-why
Dan Wootton for UK Mailonline on 14 December said as the UK heads to the decision on the same road to digital divide as we have gone down:
“So-called liberal democracies across the globe, from the Netherlands to New Zealand, have already gone down this truly dystopian path. But perhaps the most infuriating thing about the imminent introduction of vaccine passports by law to England is that the whole thing is a completely and utterly pointless farce. That’s because evidence from across the globe suggests vaccine passports do NOT work.”
[…] “the introduction of vaccine passports in France, Germany, Ireland and Italy did nothing to stop Covid cases from skyrocketing. What we do know for certain though is vaccine passports are a hammer blow for an already struggling hospitality industry, with revenue expected to plunge by at least 25 per cent once they are introduced. So, given the lack of evidence, what are vaccine passports REALLY about? Coercion – or, to put it more bluntly, blackmail – pure and simple.”
dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10305145/Why-sacrificing-god-given-freedoms-sake-two-jab-vaccine-passport.
Blackmail, coercion, control, power, call it what you will. The digital identification and information capture of every citizen going about their lawful business is several steps too far. We will have to live with Covid, but we don’t have to live with government surveillance. What will they require next of us? Microchipping?
