Covid vaccine passports: There is no civil liberties argument against moving back to normality – Brian Wilson

Forgive me for being unimpressed by the “civil liberties” arguments against some form of recognition that the bearer has been vaccinated or recently tested negatively for Covid-19.

The term “vaccine passports” is unhelpful because it implies a single measurement for all form of access. As far as I am aware, nobody is suggesting that.

Each sector needs something to meet its own criteria but the idea we keep things closed because of objections to any scheme which determines who can and cannot gain access seems far-fetched.

Equally, fear of government hoarding this information is a touch paranoid. Nobody planned a pandemic and pragmatic use of data to assist opening up social and economic life can hardly be portrayed as a conspiracy against individual freedom.

We also need a sense of proportion on the whole data question. It is not government that worries me most in this respect but private interests driven by greed for profit.

Take the recent story told by the BBC Scotland Nine about a gambling addict who tried to shake off the bookies, SkyBet, who kept offering inducements to draw him back into his addiction.

When he used investigators to dig deeper into his tormentors, he found they held no fewer than 19,000 pieces of data on him – neatly classified to define his vulnerabilities. Now that, I would suggest, is a real story to cause disgust and outrage.

A smartphone and an iPad demonstrate a digital vaccine passport that can show the results of a recent Covid test or vaccination (Picture: Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

This is a field in which I would be in favour of the most Draconian laws, pinning down the sources of ultimate guilt for abuse of personal data. By comparison, the issues inadvertently raised by Covid-19 are marginal.

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