What? Literally everywhere that requires a vax card accepts paper versions too

My concern is more with people in somewhat unusual circumstances who get "lost in the bureaucracy".

I am fully vaccinated, but unable to get a QR code – digital or paper version. My circumstances are somewhat unusual: I moved back to the Netherlands after a few years abroad (I am a Dutch citizen), and due to the difficult rental market and not having a job (yet) I've been forced to stay in temporary accommodations. I can't "officially register" with the city there, and thus unable to get the QR code in spite of having all the other official documentation.

This is a problem for various reasons, and something that will finally be fixed next month or so when I start my new job, but it's not really something I can fix now. Never before has such a "unusual status" led to a near-complete exclusion from basic participation in social life. I can basically do bugger all except sit at home, and after being away for many years I don't know anyone, too. It's not a good situation. I guess I should count myself lucky as we don't require these things for public transport.

Is my situation unusual? Sure. But there are lots of unusual situations out there, ranging from simple ones ("I lost my phone this morning and now I can't go to {job interview,funeral,etc.}") to more complex ones.

Furthermore, since the current vaccinations only work so-so, it's not really clear to me how effective all of this really is and I wouldn't be surprised if the effectiveness was only very limited, or even net negative (just as bicycle helmets can provide a net-negative to cyclists safety, since cyclists tend to take more risks on average while wearing a helmet).

Overall, I'm not a huge fan, although I'm obviously biased on account of being disadvantaged quite a lot in my current situation.

No offense intended but if that's the worst that happened to you during the pandemic so far, I'd count myself incredibly lucky and be happy about it. People slipping through bureaucratic cracks is unfortunate but happens with literally everything, emergency or not.

> slipping through bureaucratic cracks is unfortunate but happens with literally everything, emergency or not.

Indeed, which is why we should think carefully about it.

> if that's the worst that happened to you during the pandemic so far, I'd count myself incredibly lucky and be happy about it

The worst? Actually, no; just the current situation relevant for this conversation. And there's always someone worse off, of course.

You are not highlighting it enough:

-- you are vaccinated;

-- we could assume you received papers at the vaccination;

-- said vaccination certificates are insufficient and you seem to require a different, related, complex document, which basically states the same of your vaccination certificate.

Though one understands the use of certificates as passes could boost practice for falsification of simpler certificates, the practice as described still seems absurd.

In some places. Now. I think it's something to be concerned about.

You can't post like this to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. I've banned the account. Please don't create accounts to do flamewar on HN—we're trying to avoid having this place burn to a crisp, and we need everyone's help with that: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

By the way, it isn't in your own interest to do this either. By posting this way, all you do is discredit your own view and reinforce the other side. You give people who might be open to your view a fresh reason to reject it—after all, if fuming and fulminating is the best that you can come up with, your case must be terribly weak. This is a poor trade for you to make in exchange for a moment of internet venting.

Not only that, but if your view happens to actually be correct, then what you're doing has the side effect of discrediting the truth, which is not in any of our interests. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...

Do you feel this strongly about driver’s licenses?

Wait till they hear about actual passports!

Well there is an interesting history to passports. This article does a decent job of outlining how they morphed from a tool to help fight the Spanish Flu to what we see today. https://apposition.substack.com/p/papers-please

Also there is quite a bit of economic work that showcases the positive impact of removing such stringent barriers to the free movement of people.

Of course, restricting people's movement across imaginary borders is very silly indeed. The point I was making is, I see plenty of frothing about vaccine passports, but not one single one of those people having conniptions about them is able to articulate what they would enable a government to do that they can't do already with your normal passport, driving license, tax ID etc.

The difference is that passports are only required for fairly rare activities (international travel, certain kinds of government interactions), whereas COVID passports are required for a lot of every-day things.

A driving license is a license is a certification that you've proven yourself capable to meet the minimum requirements to operate a potentially dangerous device, and more akin to doctor's license, lawyer license, etc. I don't think it's really the same thing.

My concern isn't really with "government can do $evil_stuff", but more in the general restriction of things.

This doesn't address the rather hysterical slippery slope argument that was being espoused. That's the one that I've never has a sane answer to - anything the government might want to do in the future with a vaccine passport, they can already do now with the plethora of unique identifying information they have on you.

HN should let brand new accounts comment once a week for the first 6 months.

The current system is fine for controlling new accounts that just show up to spew invective. They're quickly downvoted and/or flagged, even banned when they go too far. Multiple times I have seen article authors or project creators register a new HN account to specifically comment about work of theirs that has reached the front page of HN. They may write a dozen posts on their first day here, all of them useful.

Why are we attacking the person instead of the argument? We should be discussing the points, not trying to start a flame war. I'm really not sure how vaccination documentation to eat in a restaurant is equivalent to jailing people for their ethnicity, sexuality, or ideology. Can we take a step back and discuss your thought process? You have come to a much different conclusion than I and I would like to understand how. While doing so, can we kindly assume the other person is not trying to be evil?

I don't think 99% of Hacker News is in favor of requiring covid vaccination in order to perform everyday activities. It probably a double-digit percentage, but there's plenty of debate. I for one am generally speaking against both that and coercive forms of vaccination against any current diseases, even though I mostly consider it an irrational bet to skip vaccination.

It's definitely a reference to smartphones, but I was thinking more of the everyday activities themselves moving over to de facto requiring a smartphone. E.g. ordering takeaway, using certain public services, ordering transportation, communicating electronically at all and so on. Plenty of authoritarian dreams are enabled by that trend.

> I for one am generally speaking against both that and coercive forms of vaccination against any current diseases, even though I mostly consider it an irrational bet to skip vaccination.

Hopefully you're also speaking out against seatbelt laws, helmet laws, laws requiring women to wear tops places men aren't required, and second hand smoke laws?

Generally any laws where one person's freedom of choices for safety, apparel, and air polluting activities bump into other people's rights to not be annoyed by you and not cover your health expenses. In principle, they're all the same principles...

For instance, it's unclear how to rationalize against mandates for triangles of cloth on one's face in a public venue when folks are fine with mandates for triangles of cloth on one's chest at the beach. In only one of those is the lack of fabric known to kill people, but that's not the mandate we're fine with.

This whole "my freedoms!" thing needs to go back to first principles, build it back up across all domains to what we think it should be, with consistency.

> rights ... not cover your health expenses

An issue in fact is being revealed in these times with organized mutual assistance, "covering each other's health expenses", as a burden. Because it can go off the limits of good sense. As in: if one were mandated to eating salad and exercising, and to only use the car under emergency to minimize the risk of crashes, then mutual assistance would be a "shoved service" instead of a welcome feature.

> people's rights to not be annoyed by you and not cover your health expenses

The principle of "not damaging others" ("do not smoke in my face") cannot be simply mixed with "not being a burden to society" in matters that show less trivial tradeoffs.

I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing. When I hear people say "vaccine passport" I assume they mean "COVID-19 vaccination documentation". Is that a correct interpretation, or does a vaccine passport mean something more? If it is just "COVID-19 vaccination documentation", has there been a push to not allow the paper documentation? I've been primarily using my paper documentation without issue. As far as I'm aware, digital access to your vaccination status is simply a nice to have redundancy.

I need to lead this with "I'm fully vaccinated and pro-vaccine" so nobody gets the wrong idea (I'm disappointed that this is the state of discourse) BUT...

Anyone can print a piece of paper. If vaccination requirements are going to have any teeth whatsoever, they will need to be much more invasive. A central database is the minimum. You'll need holographic cards with your picture, like driver's licenses. Spot checks on restaurants to ensure they're checking ids properly, and serious consequences for failure - you'll need a license to serve food, and the FABC (food and alcoholic beverage control) board will be able to fine you or revoke it.

Basically, you'll need to treat almost all of public society the way we treat alcoholic beverage sales.

I personally find that terrifying and would rather see covid run rampant.

Anyone can print a piece of paper, but it’s also amazing how much a small obstacle can affect people’s behavior.

So yes, to get 100% compliance you would need the measures you outline, but who says that’s the goal?

The vaccination certificate in the EU has a QR code that can be cryptographically verified to have been issued by a legit authority, tells why the certificate has been issued (e.g. vaccination, negative test, etc), and embeds the name of the person such that their identity can be cross-checked against some form of official ID.

So there's no need for anything more complex than a piece of paper you can download + print. What you can't do is make a QR code of your own, change the validity reason of an existing code, or use somebody else's certificate with your own identity.

You still need the enforcement regime. Restaurants/bars/etc must have someone at the door scanning everyone's QR code (and cross checking it against a photo ID). Law enforcement must run stings against restaurants to ensure they're checking properly.

It's gross.

Restaurants can have the ID check done by the waiter when taking the order. There is very little overhead, certainly no need to employ an extra person to check papers at the door. I doubt any law enforcement is running random stings. They would probably wait for members of the public to report this first.

I don't think checking IDs is gross, and obviously if you do, there is nothing I could say to change your mind. But it doesn't change the fact that Covid passports are easily implementable with paper, there is no need for the to be "holographic picture ID".

You seem to have latched on to the least important part of what I've said. Yes, a centralized database combined with always-on internet access can suffice instead of holographic cards (in the same way that nowadays, police officers don't really need to look at your drivers license - they can just look you up from their car), but that's strictly worse from a privacy/dystopia perspective. And it does not work at all for offline dining.

Holographic cards would actually be better since it doesn't notify a central authority where and when everyone dines. You seem to be comfortable with the idea that "party of 6" sits down, and the waiter spends the next 5 minutes screwing with his phone scanning everyone's (printed?) QR codes and verifying faces. I would rather get covid.

Here in the US, ABC boards do in fact run stings on bars and restaurants to make sure they are checking ids. And yes history has shown that it is absolutely necessary if you want compliance.

There is no need for a centralized database or always on internet access. How did my description suggest that either would be needed? As the verifiee, you need to print a piece of paper and have an ID. As the verifier, you need an offline app. No central authority is notified of the scan. None of this is rocket science, it is basic public key cryptography.

It does not take 5 minutes either. In practice it takes about 5 seconds to scan and validate the cert.

You have built an elaborate fantasy of how bad the system would be, rather than look at how the systems deployed for half a billion people actually work. Literally none of your stated fears actually bears out in practice. Suggesting you'd rather just get Covid is just depraved.

OK, I'll concede that PK cryptography can be used to eliminate the online requirement given that you don't need a revocation mechanism. You're still going to need active measures to ensure restaurant compliance. And signing these without a centralized database at the signing authority? Theoretically possible, practically impossible.

Tell me, where is it that these systems are working for half a billion people?

I'm guessing this is somewhere with a vastly different cultural landscape than the US. Depraved or not, I still value what little anonymity I have left.

This is how the EU (and some associated countries) have it set up. One obviously would like to centralize the signing just so for some basic auditing and to limit the number of public keys that get installed. But that just means a central signing service, it does not need to have persistent storage in said central location. In practice having the generated certs in a central DB is very useful for the users though, since it makes it trivial to install the certs on a new phone etc.

I certainly wouldn't want to go to a restaurant which checks my ID.

We're heading to a state of affairs where you can't move in public anonymously. This is a dystopian nightmare.

We detached this flamewar subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30087680. Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30088337.

My vax passport is printed onto good old fashioned paper.

I put my covid pass on a t-shirt

It's painfully obvious that they don't mean anti-vax, given "mandatory usage will be a race between mobile payment and government services like eID and eLicense".

As most things, even if you were required to carry an electronic vaccine proof, you would simply be unable to do certain things; most bars require ID to enter, and I wouldn't be surprised if eventually they'll be required to use scanners that verify REAL ID status (given all US territories and states, outside of American Samoa[0], issue DLs or ID cards with REAL ID).

0: https://www.dhs.gov/real-id/american-samoa

Agreed. Soon children will need vaccine passports to attend public schools. Bars may even start requiring age passports to consume alcohol. Truly, Pandora's box has been opened.

Could you please not take HN threads further into flamewar? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The other day I was driving recklessly down the road, minding my own business, and an officer asked me for documents showing I had performed my due diligence to drive on a public road without endangering others. Truly we have lost the fight already. As long as I am only thinking of myself, doing my own thing, nobody should bother me - it's private!

I initially missed your sarcasm but yes, truly, this is the worst outcome. What’s next, requiring driving passports to operate a vehicle? Identity passports to enter a foreign country?

When will the madness end??

(/s)

> When will the madness end

Madness ends with discrimination. The importance of a licence to operating machinery dangerous for the nearby only after validation is clear-cut; that of limiting access to damaging intoxicants to weak decisors with unmyelinated brains is clear-cut; other contexts are not.

Excluding children from education is the exact same thing as excluding minors from consuming alcohol