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French patrons can face up to 6 months in prison for lacking Covid pass (theguardian.com)
8 points by briefcomment on Aug 9, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 5 comments



My perspective as a dual citizen French/American tech worker living in the US: the fact that there aren't digital Apple Wallet/smartphone covid passes is such a joke. Farcical levels of stupidity, something you'd read in an 'Idiot Hero' trope novel. It is such a failure to capitalize on the available technologies at our disposal as a global society.

Instead I have a piece of shit paper document from the CDC that isn't even a standard business/credit/debit card size (!) so it is already in tatters, with a grease stain (my dynamic life has failed me). Nowhere even asks for it, so enforcement is a failure in and of itself. The vaccine should be mandatory and there should be a sleek digital pass so I can not have one extra piece of paper to carry around because of inept structural decisions around how to implement a post-pandemic lifestyle. So stupid, I don't know how these social planners have jobs.


Thank goodness we don't let authoritarians be social planners.


Isn't this like the debate between paper voting and electronic voting? Wouldn't there be many security risks involved with smartphone passes?


There are a significant number of ways to do it correctly. I personally would like one, but not centralised, but some form of completely anonymous time-limited digitally signed vaccination YES/NO/DAYS SINCE COMPLETED/TYPE and nothing else. Constantly morphing QR, only valid for a few minutes, prevent transferring via screenshot or passing a phone since it's invalidated after scan, whatever else.

I would be glad to show something like that to every store and restaurant - I explicitly do not want to give ANY store my phone number or any other information at all. I explicitly WISH TO tell the store that I am vaccinated with Moderna as of 2 weeks or more ago.

There are ways to do it reasonably correctly, but local bureaucratic bullshit will happen and what will appear is some kind of online-only spyware app that contains PII/PCI data encoded into your QR code.


More correctly: they can face a prison sentence (in extreme cases) or more likely a fine for entering a venue under false pretenses. Not simply for "lacking a pass".

Flagging for the clickbaity, and misleading title.




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