PANOPTICON August 4, 2020
Ever since the first day of the lock down, people around the world have had one burning question: how do we get out of lockdown and back to our former lives?
Two widely touted ways we are told we will regain our freedom are either a vaccine and failing that - or incorporating that - some kind of “papers-please” pass containing our personal health data as it relates to COVID19.
And of course given how much money is swirling around all things COVID related, oligarchs are jumping on both of these challenges. I’ll leave the vaccine conversation for another program, (here’s where Fred breathes a sigh of relief!!) and focus in today’s episode of Panopticon on some of the tracking apps which we are being told will be a big part of our future new normal.
And just on a personal note, as a child of apartheid in South Africa, growing up watching people being pulled off the streets into police vans because their papers weren’t in order, it is particularly painful for me to talk about this.
So first up is a Swedish company called Sidehide that say they are testing their biometric ID product in Miami hotels this summer. Sidehide uses a QR code embedded with a selfie and your government issued ID to provide faster authentication during hotel check ins and could in the future include your covid19 test results and your vaccine status.
Delta and Heathrow Airport have both expressed interest in this product – which leads me to another early entrant in this space, Onfido, which raised a hundred million dollars in venture capital in April, including from M12, Microsoft’s venture fund. Like Sidehide, Onfido uses a QR code embedded with your government ID, a selfie and AI to authenticate you.
Onfido recently submitted a proposal to Britain’s parliamentary Science and Technology committee, so I suspect we will be hearing more from Onfido in the future.
And finally I want to talk about COVI-Pass which uses a VCode—similar to a QR code—that flashes green if a person has tested negative for the virus, red if tests show that they have the virus or don’t have antibodies, or if their test result has expired and yellow when it’s time to be retested. The app can “geo-fence” an entrance, prohibiting visitors with a red light from entering a building, stadium or school.
The COO of COVI-Pass, Adam Palmer, believes all governments will move toward a global health passport, and they will be as common as carrying a driver’s license or a passport. The company says they are shipping passes to both the private sector and governments in over fifteen countries, including Italy, France, India, and the United States.
So how close are we to having these products rolled out?
Well the sticking point at the moment is not getting governments and corporations to jump all over this, but the inconvenient fact that science simply can’t match the ambitions of the people who want to control us.
Let’s start with the basics. What constitutes a positive COVID19 test? I’m not going to delve into the controversy about the accuracy of swab tests, but even a positive COVID19 antibody test is potentially meaningless. According to the CDC, antibody tests don’t test specifically for COVID19 so a positive antibody test could just mean you’ve been exposed to a similar corona virus in the past. (And we will provide a CDC link in the show notes)
A second sticking point is that scientists are coming to understand the limitations of antibody testing, because immunity to corona virus infections is coded on what are called T-cells. Testing for T-cell immunity to COVID19 is possible – but it’s hard to scale. The other problem with testing for COVID19 immunity on T-cells is scientists are finding that large percentages of the US population already have T-cell immunity to COVID19, based on prior exposure to corona viruses (and again, we will be posting those research papers in the show notes).
But using these immunity passes to track test results could become moot once governments start rolling out warp speed vaccines. These immunity passes could then be used to record our vaccination history - and Mastercard will likely have a jump start on their competitors in this space. In a joint venture with the Bill Gates-backed GAVI vaccine alliance and the AI-powered “identity authentication” company Trust Stamp, Mastercard is rolling out the “Wellness Pass” in “low-income, remote communities” in West Africa. The Wellness Pass is a digital vaccination record and identity platform linked to Mastercard’s payment system.
Trust Stamp uses biometric identity data and the company says their system can operate in areas of the world without internet or cellular connectivity. And because it uses biometric data, it doesn’t need a person’s legal name or identity to function.
So is the Wellness Pass a super awesome, cool little app that enables you to roll up to the check in desk, show your face, be greeted by name, and then step onto a plane safe in the knowledge that everyone onboard is as up to date with their vaccines as you are?
How comfortable are we with a payment system that’s linked to our personal health information?
What happens if we fall behind with our vaccines? Or find out we react badly to them. Will we find ourselves being locked out of our payment system? Or other systems? Will our pass prevent us from boarding planes and trains - or even entering supermarkets - because it’s flashing red instead of green?
Are these apps the beginning of a western style social credit system?
Is this a Brave New World? And if it is, are you brave enough to stand up to it?
Or are you going to roll up your sleeve and roll over?
CDC Guidance on Positive Tests:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/testing/serology-overview.html
Research Papers on Widespread T-cell Immunity
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.20061440v1
https://www.cell.com/cell/pdf/S0092-8674(20)30610-3.pdf
Articles and Blogs on T-cell Immunity
https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/new-data-on-t-cells-and-the-coronavirus
