“ Last Friday morning, during an interview on Good Morning America, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration was taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the United States.
However by Friday afternoon the Department of Homeland Security was clarifying Mayorkas’ statement. The DHS says there won’t be any federal vaccination database nor any mandate that requires people to get a single vaccination credential. It also said there are no plans for anything like a U.S. passport.”
The U.S. is suspicious of many types of documentation. E.g. none needed for voting in many areas, etc. The culture tends towards erring on less bureaucracy.
If more states ban covid-passports, I wonder if the EU would rather not have tourists than allow visitations.
Once there is a vaccine surplus, the vast amount of risk is on those who decide out of their own volition to not get vaccinated, at which point society can’t hold their hands anymore.
That's certainly a possibility if safety really is a concern. But I'd wager that the average American anti Covid fanatic (the sort: Masks are fascism! It's like what the nazis did with the jews!) is not really the kind of person travelling the world.
I don't think that others, who want to travel the world really mind getting the necessary documentation.
The whole principle that you need to prove vaccination to be let into a country is not really new. And there's the yellow vaccine passport issued by the WHO, which exists for decades.
I needed to show proof for a yellow fever vaccination when travelling to Venezuela. And that was in 1989.
Exactly. Necessary and recommended vaccinations are one of the first things to check when planning a trip to destinations in Africa, South East Asia etc.
With regard to need to prove vaccination, note that the WHO yellow-fever certificate was originally good for 10 years, and recently the WHO announced that it should be good for life. COVID passports are rather different in that they are passed on a QR code, so your certificate could be deemed invalid by your country’s authorities at any time. If you are traveling when that happens, they you might suddenly have to search for whatever new booster vaccine is required for onward travel, which might be a challenge if you are in the developing world.
I think this may vary by destination. I have no data (not sure if such data exists) but, anecdotally, living in Ireland, I get the impression that many do travel here at least.
It may be that different destinations hold different draws (& I'm told the Irish-American community has diverged significantly in political leanings compared to Ireland/Europe)
I've read of plenty of people visiting Iceland recently, where it's essentially test at the border then shelter in place until you get your results. And people quite happily listing off the spots they visited on their way to their hotel to shelter in place for the evening. And to be frank, Iceland does seem to be as accommodating as possible while understandably protective of their near-zero rates. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort to reciprocate by acting as a guest should.
I don't want to sound overly critical, but it's not just the rabid fanatics. I do get the impression plenty of perfectly reasonable American tourists believe they're a special case.
Requiring this for experimental and not-yet-approved vaccines is new. (The COVID vaccines only have Emergency Use Authorizations.)
That is incredibly mean-spirited. And exactly what I have come to expect.
I am fully vaccinated: measles, rubella, all the rest.
I will not get the COVID shot.
I never get the annual flu shot, either. I am skeptical of a highly experimental new treatment for a disease that isn't all that lethal.
My body, my choice. If I die, that's my problem.
You go ahead and get the shot. Your body, your choice. If you "trust the science", it'll give you immunity, and you don't need to worry about me at all.
My attitude is mainstream. You just never listen to it, because you'd probably prefer that CNN or the NYT "interpret" it for you.
You'd be wrong.
I've received more vaccines than 99.99% of the people you meet. I visit the doctor and get every jab that's recommended before every international trip (along with documentation for my prescriptions in case I'm questioned about them at a border,) but I will not receive any of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines until they are adequately tested. Adequate testing takes about a decade. I'm not really concerned about their efficacy, but anyone who tells you that their long-term safety is already established is lying to you.
(Note that we had such a database called "Elektronischer Impfausweis" but it had to be taken down after it was found to be a mess in security)
The idea of registering with your local municipality is downright alien in the United States. At best, you're required to eventually update your drivers license when you switch states, which (depending on the state) is the equivalent of "maybe" updating your license and vehicle registration whenever you eventually get around to it.
Compare that against moving between, say, Switzerland and Poland (or any other combination of Schengen member countries).
I used to respect that viewpoint - but, honestly, I can't take it seriously anymore after we learned first of NSA mass surveillance and then of the loaded discussion about voter fraud and the byzantine voter registration procedures.
The US is still drawing up a specter from the cold war era while ignoring that those danger never materialized when national IDs where actually issued - and while actively developing tech that is far more invasive than a simple ID.
I think by now, introducing a federal ID could even help the fight against racism: If there was a single federal ID that was easily obtainable for any US citizen, that would remove the need for all the different and in part discriminatory registration systems, while still allowing voter fraud concerns to be addressed.
As far as I can tell they're still very much planned for inbound international travel to the UK, and they're already in use for outbound international travel - the NHS app is accepted as proof of vaccination status at the border when entering quite a few countries e.g. Greece https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice/greece/entry-requir...
I think everything depends how long the covid is issue to the hospitals of the destination country. If the vaccines are very potent, as it looks like from in Israel, then it might be that most of Europe & US can already travel freely without passports at the end of year.
I think the same logic will apply for visits from rest of the world.
The vaccine cards are easily faked so at this point, what proof so people have they got the vaccine? If you got it at Kaiser or UCSF it’s probably in your records, but beyond that?
I’m guessing that people will need to get a vaccine antigen test to prove immunogenicity and then get that officially certified.
I assume people coming from non-vaccine-passport countries will require additional documentation (ie they'll have to prove vaccination, just not in a standardized way)
The Swiss thing looks kinda complicated, and likely hard for other countries to participate.
Easy Solution: issue a passport insert + seal.
Go to the hospital/clinic, show your passport, they give you a seal, a stamp, a number, and a signature.
The number can be typed into a computer to match with last name and first initial so border people can check.
The insert can be some kind of things that's hard to fake + the stamp would be required.
Alternatively - you take a doctor's note down to the DMV and they issue you a little temp/card/id with your name and photo.
So there's a 'central standard' but no overarching bureaucracy.
When the the system stands the only bureaucracy will be for an issuer to get a cert from the authority or for an authority to be included in the root.
All the things you describe with the seal and number and system to validate is just as much if not more bureaucracy and is not that far off from the proposed solution.
The German app and implentation will be on GitHub too: https://github.com/Digitaler-Impfnachweis
The apps and integration server are here: https://github.com/eu-digital-green-certificates
The schema and business rules are here: https://github.com/ehn-digital-green-development
Come join us if you're interested in taking a look, it's quite interesting :)
[1]: https://thezvi.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/covid-4-9-another-va... - Scroll down to/Ctrl-F for: "Or, you could raise the more generalized version of this objection. Also from the comments:"
The EU model is a little different as there is a whole laundry list of data.
Let's just say im very skeptical when it comes to IT-projects of the Swiss government. They regularly waste 100s of millions of CHF on stuff that simply doesn't work.
https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releas...
This government has created a website where all certificate issuance and most other government-related business is fully electronic, I kind of can't believe they've done such a good job for such a backwards country. I'm amazed.
I was sceptical if they manage to actually deliver as fast as they promised especially as the EU guidelines and specs were were general/rough just a month ago.
The issue is that maintaining roadblocks along Schengen borders has incurred costs that countries don’t like to deal with long-term, and even with the roadblocks there have been a lot of gaps. I spent last summer cycling across Europe. I was fortunate in that all borders on my route were open, but I met a load of other cyclists who had crossed various Schengen borders illegally, because no one was checking traffic along some minor road through the fields.
So, for people with their own transportation, you might manage an entire European summer holiday without anyone ever checking your COVID certificate.
The DCC itself contains a lot of information so it shouldn't be directly used outside of border or police checks. I can - technically - be used as the basis for issuing of Verified Credentials by other parties. For example by airports - with the privacy protected by their privacy policy.
Whether the law allows that is another question.. and IANAL..
[Disclaimer: I work on the Dutch COVID apps and am deeply involved with Digital Green on EU level].
Loads of venues and events in New York are requiring an Excelsior pass. Some will allow persons with out-of-state IDs in with paperwork inspection, but that’s a slower line.
What impressed me was that the verification was done fully offline in a privacy preserving way
[1] https://tadas.varanauskas.lt/posts/forging-lithuanian-vaccin...
I am devastated to see this coming.
Why can't this be purely client-validated like passport chips?
You could easily print the QR code out and the validator can be offline; the validation still works fine. The validator should have to connect to the network periodically to check for revocations, otherwise everything can be done offline.
Issuance, Revocations & cross country validation requires some kind of backbone but even issuers don‘t have to be centralized if you want. The only thing you need is to get an issuer cert from that central trust authority and you can start issuing passes that are valid.
Currently it still requires a government ID in addition to the pass so it‘s even more „offline“. The specs have room to enable eID solutions though but that will probably be online only as the verifiers will need to be specific for every provider.
It seems like the server is needed for getting / revoking certificates, not for the verification.
From the diagram this looks similar.
The client-server is to fetch the certs and revocations, and handle the signing infrastructure.
