Summary
As more people get lifesaving COVID-19 vaccines, electronic vaccine credentials will assume an increasingly prominent role in the debate over when and how communities can safely resume in-person activities. In this report, S.T.O.P. briefly traces the international history of vaccine and immunity credentials. We then evaluate in depth the privacy, safety, and efficacy of three different vaccination certificate forms in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic:
Vaccine passports for international travel
Domestic vaccine apps determining entry to community spaces
Traditional one-time vaccine registries
While traditional school vaccine registries are essential to contain the pandemic, and digital “yellow cards” may be helpful for international travel, domestic vaccine apps, such as New York’s Excelsior Pass, raise numerous surveillance and equity concerns. These apps facilitate invasive geolocation tracking and threaten a new form of segregation, due to inequities to both vaccine and smartphone access based on race, nationality, income, and age.
Supported in part by a grant from the Open Society Foundations and by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
