We’ve already had plenty of discussions here about the idea of immunity passports and the arrival of a two-tiered society comprised of those with and without immunity. (And it’s already in full swing in many parts of American society.) For one example, Illinois has already begun easing certain travel restrictions if the traveler can produce the card issued through the CDC showing when you received your vaccination(s). But that system has opened the door to something that should have been easily predictable. Any time you have a valuable commodity like an immunity passport that is nothing more than a paper card with some basic information on it, fraudsters will realize that the document can be easily faked. And in Chicago, it’s already happening. (CBS Chicago)
COVID vaccine cards are supposed to prove that you’ve had the shot against the novel coronavirus – but there is nothing stopping someone from making a fake, and crooks know it.
The card is technically just for your own records. But as CBS 2’s Jermont Terry reported Tuesday night, fraud experts said this goes beyond just identity theft – especially if a sheet of paper is all you need to prove you’re vaccinated.
Across Illinois, there is a massive push to get people vaccinated. As people get the dose, they leave with a simple card from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“The card is key to the kingdom to returning to that land of normalcy,” said Professor Bill Kresse of Governors State University, also known as Professor Fraud.
Faking an actual passport issued by the government is hard to do (though not impossible) and the penalties for creating one are severe enough to land you in prison. But these CDC cards are a joke by comparison.
My wife received her vaccinations more than a month ago. (She qualified by virtue of being a frontline worker at a vaccination pod.) I looked at the card they gave her, and I assure you that I could knock one out on our laserjet printer in ten minutes at most. It’s not laminated and it’s not even made of particularly thick paper. It has a couple of blanks on it with room for initials showing the place and the date when you received your vaccinations. You could print one out and scribble some illegible initials in the blanks and you’d be good to go.
As the linked CBS report points out, there’s another significant difference between an immunity passport and a regular, government-issued passport. There are currently no laws on the books in Illinois against creating such a fraudulent document. There might some generic “forgery of government documents” law that could be applied, but it’s not really clear if these cards would qualify as any sort of official government document.
But the use of such forged cards would be particularly insidious. If that’s what we’re relying on to be able to get on a plane or into a movie theater or whatever else, everyone will be assuming that they are in a safe environment with others who are not carrying the disease. Somebody sneaking in with a fake card could be an asymptomatic carrier without anyone knowing it and then their immunity would really get put to the test.
It’s bad enough that we already have situations like the one in New York City where people are being allowed to go out to concerts, basketball games and movies, but only if they have this card. (Or an app on their phone serving the same purpose, though those will be hacked sooner or later.) Everyone else is still forced to sit at home. But now we’re going to have people making money selling bogus cards so others can game the system?
This entire concept is discriminatory and clearly open to fraud and abuse. Governments around the world are rushing to implement these plans without thinking them through first. And society is going to be worse off for it.
