Concerns over ACLU vaccine passport suggest unusual common ground with GOP



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The U.S. Civil Liberties Union and some GOP members find themselves in a rare deal over the idea of ​​vaccine passports, expressing both privacy concerns and undue government potential.

“We are also concerned that a vaccine passport will encourage overuse. The issues with passport design are separate from where and when people may be required to provide proof of vaccination,” Jay Stanley, analyst main policy with the ACLU’s speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, wrote in a blog post on the ACLU website Wednesday.

Stanley wrote that it is likely that the passport system for vaccines “will become overused as people will be asked for credentials at every turn.”

“While there are legitimate circumstances in which people may be asked for proof of vaccination, we don’t want to turn into a checkpoint society that survives the danger of COVID and casually excludes people without accreditation. establishments where vaccination mandates are not highly justified. Stanley continued.

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The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the Biden administration was looking for ways to roll out a nationwide vaccination passport program as more companies prepared to require proof of vaccination to use their services.

White House coronavirus coordinator Jeff Zients said the role of the White House was to “help make sure that all solutions in this area are simple, free, open source, accessible to people at the same time. digitally and in print, and designed from the ground up to protect people’s privacy. “

Stanley said in a statement to Fox News that the ACLU does not object to requiring proof of vaccination “in certain contexts”, but that this proof should not be exclusively digital and should not allow the tracking other personal health information.

“There is also a real concern that the creation of vaccination certificates could lead to overuse, or have a chilling effect on immigrant communities and communities of color which are already subject to excessive control and surveillance,” Stanley said. “There are legitimate circumstances in which people can be asked for proof of vaccination, but at the moment not everyone can get the vaccine. This is precisely what herd immunity tries to protect against: community spreads to people whose medical conditions contraindicate a vaccine or do not have one. We do not want a vaccination passport that leads our most vulnerable people to be further excluded from their full participation in our society. “

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Some Republicans have said they find the idea unconstitutional, while others have linked the proposal to voter identification laws.

“Considering Democrats want to demand vaccine IDs so people can carry out their basic daily activities, they no longer have any reason to oppose voter ID laws,” the minority whip said. from the House, Steve Scalise, R-La., to Fox News. “If by Democratic logic you were to need ID to even enter a grocery store, surely there would be no objection to showing ID to legally vote.”

First-year rep Madison Cawthorn, RN.C., strongly condemned the idea of ​​vaccine passports.

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“Proposals like this sound like 1940s Nazi Germany. We must make every effort to prevent America from becoming a ‘show your papers’ corporation,” Cawthorn told Fox News. “The Constitution and our founding principles denounce this type of totalitarianism.”

Houston Keene of Fox News contributed to this report.

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