Vaccine Passports Are Not the Solution w/ Elizabeth Renieris

Paris Marx is joined by Elizabeth Renieris to discuss why we should be concerned about proposals for vaccine passports and how they could create a precedent for a larger rollout of digital identity documents.

Elizabeth Renieris is a practitioner fellow at Stanford University’s Digital Civil Society Lab and a tech + human rights fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. Follow Elizabeth on Twitter as @hackylawyer.

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Tech Won’t Save Us offers a critical perspective on tech, its worldview, and wider society with the goal of inspiring people to demand better tech and a better world. Follow the podcast (@techwontsaveus) and host Paris Marx (@parismarx) on Twitter, and support the show on Patreon.

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Also mentioned in this episode:

• Elizabeth wrote about what’s really at stake in the vaccine passport debate • . • The US federal government has talked about leaving this to the private sector • , the EU is planning a “ digital green pass • ” for travel, and Israel rolled out a “ green passport • ” for vaccinated people to gain access to various public and private spaces. • Contact tracing apps did not deliver on their big promises • . • New York’s vaccine passport has already been forged • . • Rolling out vaccine passports has high costs for businesses • who will want to use that infrastructure in other ways. • Parts of the Global South may not receive mass Covid vaccinations until 2024 • . • The modern passport regime was created in the 1920s • , with the goal being to eventually abolish it. Now borders are being equipped with facial recognition cameras • and border guards can check your phone • .

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