Vaccine passports go live, but for how long?
Connected consumers roundup #15
Back in February when here in the UK we were still very much locked down, I wrote about the potential of vaccine passports to create unfair outcomes for consumers. Less than three months later, and after much speculation and prototyping, the European Union has launched its Digital Green Certificate which shows a person’s covid-19 status (recovered, vaccinated or recently tested negative). The certificate comes as a QR code which can be stored on a mobile or presented as a hard copy – the European Commission says it does not retain this data for privacy and security reasons. The certificate’s core purpose is for travel within the European Union. People surveyed by consumer group Euroconsumers were supportive, but wanted fair access built in – two thirds supported free tests for those who were not yet vaccinated or unable to be vaccinated.
There have been calls in the UK to expand schemes beyond travel into a full digital health pass infrastructure to enable safe participation in busy public spaces like sports and entertainment. Euro 2020 organisers recently announced that vaccine status via the UK’s health service app will be required on entry to the national stadium at Wembley where up to 22,500 football fans could gather this month.
However, privacy and equality campaigners alike argue that any mass digital surveillance of health status will increase data collection and the risk of it being used to discriminate against people. They worry that along with other things being accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic – like intrusive remote surveillance of employees - it is being used to push forward significant changes without due regard for the social and human impact.
It could be that many of the discussions on vaccine passports are time limited. As populations reach higher levels of protection (whether through vaccination or previous infection), the need for granular level scrutiny of status may lessen. That seems to be the case in Israel – they were very early adopters of vaccine passes but have scrapped the scheme as case numbers fall. Or, given the inevitable development of variants across the globe, and the enthusiasm for embedding fuller digital ID or digital health infrastructure, we may be heading for a long-term pandemic and a permanent state of individual health surveillance.
(Really) long read: Researchers at MIT have proposed some new ways to put data power back in consumers hands by basically doing things with it that large companies may not like. This could involve withholding data, messing it up with deliberately confusing usage, or consciously moving your data to a more ethical competitor. Thanks to Mariane ter Veen for sharing this one, my favourite type of story!
Short takes:
Baby monitor app security flaws: An investigation by UK consumer group Which? found that a baby monitor app had security flaws that could have exposed the monitors’ feeds to strangers. The Wonder Weeks app is very popular, making it into the top five paid-for iPhone apps in 2020. Since being alerted by Which? the security issues have been addressed. https://www.which.co.uk/news/2021/06/popular-baby-monitor-app-put-privacy-at-risk/
Unused wifi can power small consumer devices: with more awareness of the energy use of ICT and data, here’s a nicely circular story of how wifi can be transformed into energy Wifi signals are always on, but when they’re not busy accessing the internet their power goes to waste. Harnessing that latency can provide enough energy to power small electronics like LED lightbulbs and reduce reliance on other energy sources.
McDonald’s tries out Artificial intelligence technology at drive-thrus: the system uses ‘natural language processing’ a type of AI technology designed to make sense of human speech. Customers making orders won’t interact with a human member of staff unless something goes wrong - estimated to be about one fifth of the time. It could eventually automatically generate and offer recommendations - are you loving it yet?