{"id":1790,"date":"2020-08-07T08:49:21","date_gmt":"2020-08-07T08:49:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/07\/no-to-blockchain-credentials-of-covid-19-test-results-for-entry-to-public-spaces\/"},"modified":"2020-08-07T08:49:21","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T08:49:21","slug":"no-to-blockchain-credentials-of-covid-19-test-results-for-entry-to-public-spaces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/2020\/08\/07\/no-to-blockchain-credentials-of-covid-19-test-results-for-entry-to-public-spaces\/","title":{"rendered":"No to Blockchain Credentials of COVID-19 Test Results for Entry to Public Spaces"},"content":{"rendered":"

No to Blockchain Credentials of COVID-19 Test Results for Entry to Public Spaces<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

An ill-conceived California bill endorses a blockchain-based system that would turn COVID-19 test results into permanent records that could be used to grant access to public places.<\/p>\n

EFF and ACLU oppose<\/a> California A.B. 2004<\/a>. The newest version of this bill would create a pilot program for using \u201cverifiable health credentials\u201d to report COVID-19 and other medical test results. The bill defines such a credential as \u201ca portable electronic patient record,\u201d for which authenticity \u201ccan be independently verified cryptographically.\u201d The bill\u2019s fact sheet<\/a> explains that these credentials \u201cuse blockchain technology\u201d to create \u201ca provable health record\u201d for purpose of \u201ctravel, returning to employment, immunization status, and so on.\u201d Three rounds of official bill analysis<\/a> provide the same explanation.<\/p>\n

This bill is a blockchain solution in search of a problem, and COVID-19 is a problem that will not be so easily solved.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a huge privacy concern. No one should have to unlock their phone and expose their health information in order to gain entry to their office, school, or neighborhood market.<\/p>\n

Medical test results are a poor fit for public ledgers. First, per the recommendations<\/a> of California\u2019s Blockchain Working Group, the \u201cmost critical question\u201d when considering adopting blockchain technology is whether \u201ca permanent record [is] warranted.\u201d Here, it clearly is not. A person\u2019s COVID-19 status may change from day to day, and tests are often hard to come by. This system could unfairly punish those who can\u2019t afford to be tested nearly constantly. Second, while verifiable credentials might make sense for reporting a binary fact (such as whether or not a person is 21), medical tests come with strong caveats and significant margins of error. For example, some COVID-19 diagnostic tests have a false negative rate as high as 20 or 30%<\/a>. <\/span>The science behind testing for COVID-19 immunity is even less settled. According to the CDC<\/a><\/span>, \u201cwe do not know how much protection [COVID-19] antibodies may provide or how long this protection may last.\u201d This nuance is lost when a test result is turned into a credential. In short, this bill is a blockchain solution in search of a problem, and COVID-19 is a problem that will not be so easily solved.<\/p>\n

Worse, the bill would take us a troubling step towards a national<\/a> identification<\/a> system. It would habituate people to present a digital token as a condition of entry to physical spaces, and habituate gatekeepers to demand such digital tokens. Such systems could be expanded to track every occasion that a person presented their digital token, or to prove other pieces of personal information like age, pregnancy, or HIV status. Further, such systems would create new information security problems when people hand their unlocked phones to gatekeepers, and create new social equity problems given the one-in-five<\/a> people who don\u2019t have a smartphone.<\/p>\n

EFF and ACLU also opposed<\/a> an earlier version of this bill. You can read here<\/a> our lengthier explanation of this bill\u2019s many problems. We urge the California legislature to reject A.B. 2004. It will do nothing to address the COVID-19 crisis, and much to invade our digital rights.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Published at Thu, 06 Aug 2020 19:52:30 +0000<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No to Blockchain Credentials of COVID-19 Test Results for Entry to Public Spaces An ill-conceived…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":1789,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4549],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1790","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blockchain"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/techclot.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/QzTMHm.png?fit=1227%2C610&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3orZX-sS","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1790"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1790\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1790"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1790"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/techclot.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1790"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}