There are few things as deadly serious as getting New Yorkers vaccinated, but when you look at Mayor de Blasio’s new NYC Covid Safe app, the technology is just cartoonish. Well, to be specific, the app shows Mickey Mouse.
That’s what happened when I tested out the software, which the city released as part of its new “Key To The City” vaccine mandate. I quickly saw that this software wasn’t a true passport, as some claim. No, it was nothing more than a camera app dressed up as a health credential.
With a few clicks, I not only renamed myself “Mickey Mouse,” but I used the Disney character’s image as my ID, vaccine card, and negative Covid test. De Blasio’s fanfare for the app is ludicrous, but I’m not laughing. Mickey might not be accepted as vaccine proof, but someone could just as quickly upload a vaccine card from Google or a friend’s social media.
In recent days, we’ve gone from “Hot Vax Summer” to the “Delta Doldrums,” as the highly contagious variant threatens to once again lock down our city and cripple our hospitals. In just a month, COVID-19 cases spiked more than 10-fold, rising beyond any point in summer 2020.
New vaccine requirements make sense, but what we don’t need is apps promising to make vaccine-based entry to places easier. American schools and businesses have effectively used paper-based vaccine registries for decades. Like many, I carry a copy of my CDC card in my pocket, and millions of us figured out how to photograph our records without the mayor’s help. Thankfully, these forms of vaccine proof remain valid under de Blasio’s proposal, even though some have attacked paper proof as insecure.
Even those supportive of vaccine apps were confused by the mayor’s product launch. After all, New York State already has the first vaccine passport app in the country: Excelsior Pass. The duplicative effort speaks to the long-running rivalry between de Blasio and Cuomo, our soon-to-be former governor. It’s an open secret that the two men can’t stand each other, and an inescapable reality that their administrations can’t work together. The competing apps stir flashbacks to so many scenes from the pandemic, when Cuomo and de Blasio battled to control both the city and the narrative.
But New York City’s app may speak to a more important truth: New York State’s multi-million-dollar boondoggle doesn’t really work. While approximately 10% of New Yorkers have downloaded the QR code-enabled pass, millions more are ineligible. That’s because Excelsior Pass doesn’t work if you were vaccinated out of state. Not only does this mean that many New Yorkers are ineligible, but all tourists will be barred from the system.
At the same time, plenty of people who were fully vaccinated within the state and should be able to enroll are blocked by technical glitches and database mistakes. And that doesn’t even include the millions of New Yorkers without a smartphone or home printer, up to 15% of the state by some estimates. Despite all these restrictions, the app remains laughably insecure, as I showed in April when I forged a volunteer’s pass in just 11 minutes.
Not only are these apps buggy and insecure, they collect data. For Excelsior Pass, that means potentially tracking every location we check in to, while NYC Covid Safe tracks our IP address.
There are a lot of things that City Hall could be doing to actually boost public health, such as promoting distancing and masks, even for those of us lucky enough to be vaccinated. And at a moment when billions of people around the world are desperate to get the vaccine, we can do even more to reassure those who are hesitant.
No, perhaps we’ll never win over the anti-vaxxers themselves, convinced that the lifesaving vaccine contains everything from microchips to alien organisms. But we can help those held back by a lack of a safety net. A major driver of vaccine hesitancy for working Americans is the fear of losing work because of side effects. While we know that the vaccines are incredibly safe and effective, losing a day or two of wages could mean the difference for some between keeping the lights on and food on the table.
Instead of spending millions on new apps — according to my organization’s investigation, New York State is on the hook for up to $17 million for Excelsior Pass — we should have spent more money making sure that New Yorkers never face an economic barrier to getting the jab.
Vaccine mandates may make sense, and they may be here to stay, but the app fad should fade. We all want technology that can protect our families, but the reality is that the best vaccine proof was in our pockets the whole time.
Cahn is the founder and executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project.