Vaccinal passport everything is in how

Vaccinal passport everything is in how

The question of whether or not Canada should create a vaccination passport has been decided by the Minister of Health, Patty Hajdu, who confirmed a few days ago the federally intention to establish a system of this kind, in order toto allow Canadians to travel abroad again.The time has therefore come to determine who will be responsible for issuing this document to Canada and how it should be designed and deployed.

Publié le 9 mai 2021Vivek Krishnamurthy et Colleen M. Flood Professeurs de droit à l’Université d’Ottawa, membres d’une équipe de recherche soutenue par le Groupe de travail sur l’immunité face à la COVID‑19

Number of countries and regions worldwide have already established a form or another of vaccination passport, including Israel, Denmark, China, Mexico and Lebanon.The European Union is in the process of doing so, just like the United Kingdom, and New York State has its own.In all these territories and elsewhere, this measure contributes to the return to a normal life, while facilitating travel inside the country as well as abroad.

Despite all these advantages, the Canadian population has good reasons to worry about the repercussions of the vaccination passport on their private life.Indeed, history teaches us that the measures adopted in crisis are tending to "continue".Adopted during the First World War, income tax was to be a provisional measure;However, last week, millions of Canadian taxpayers made their income tax return.

Consequently, defenders of the right to respect for privacy are concerned to see a device that should serve to check, in time of pandemic, our vaccination status before entering a business or a concert hall to become the skeleton ofA sustainable monitoring system based on geolocation.

These are legitimate concerns, but our research also shows that it is possible, to avoid this kind of drift, to decide the characteristics of the document in question and the rules that will frame its use.We can indeed design a passport which will maximize the benefits for public health while minimizing the repercussions in terms of respect for privacy and human rights.

Passeport vaccinal Tout est dans le comment

To achieve this, you have to think at the outset of certain essential questions.

Private or public?

First, who will be authorized to issue vaccine passports?

In many countries and regions, the private sector has taken the lead.If the governments of Canada do not act, it is likely that it will introduce the vaccination passport to our territory also, which will raise a host of issues relating to equity, discrimination and respect for life.

If we want all eligible people to have access to this document, governments will have to issue it themselves or regulate the emerging market in this area.

Second, what information should appear in the vaccination passport?

The idea that this document could be used to monitor our comings and goings is a very real concern.But for this to happen, it would have to contain data encoded on our identity - as our name or a unique identifier as our social insurance number (NAS).In principle, the vaccination passport should therefore contain as little personal information as possible, and even silence our name.This is called "data minimization".

Third, what form will the passport take technologically?

The majority of proposals recommend a readable QR code or an application on a smartphone.Digital systems would facilitate collection and preservation forever data on the use of passports, but paper support could be a better way to protect privacy.Showing a document printed to a security guard at the entrance to a building is not likely to create a permanent digital trace like the one that a certificate could produce.

However, one could consider designing a digital passport based on technology of contact research applications as a means of protecting our privacy.

Finally, we will have to think about questions like these: who will be allowed to ask us to produce our vaccination passport?How will it be checked and validated when we present it to access a place or service?What information can we collect and record when it is required?

Good policies should make it possible to respond to concerns about respect for privacy in each of these cases.For example, governments may ensure that entities authorized to control the vaccination passport are limited to checking only the encoded data it contains, without keeping it for any purpose whatsoever.

Of course, some will oppose this measure by invoking questions in principle.However, we believe that social justice will be better served by the end of the pandemic and a rapid return to normal life.And if the vaccination passport can help us get there, then we should ask our governments to establish measures with sufficient guarantees to protect the values that we consider essential, such as respect for the right to life.

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