The Dangers of Blockchain-Enabled “Immunity Passports” for COVID-19
A Legal, Public Health, and Technical Perspective
By Elizabeth M. Renieris, Dr. Sherri Bucher, and Christian Smith
Despite limited backing from civil society or public health experts, as well as warnings from historians and bioethicists, technologists are racing ahead to build and deploy digital certificates that would allegedly let individuals “prove” whether they have recovered from the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), have tested positive for antibodies, or have received a vaccination, should one become available. One such initiative is based on a combination of an emerging W3C standard for Verifiable Credentials (VCs), non-standard decentralized identifiers (DIDs), and distributed ledger technology (DLT) or “blockchain.”¹
In this article, we examine why such proposed technological interventions lack sufficient supporting scientific and public health evidence or legitimacy. As a result, we believe such interventions, if adopted or implemented by public authorities, would pose an unjustified interference with, and serious threat to, our fundamental human rights and civil liberties, in violation of the principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality. In this article, we outline our concerns from a legal, public health-based, and…
