The Biden administration is looking into implementing COVID-19 vaccine passports, sparking concerns about it possibly being eerily much like China's social credit score that categorizes citizens into desirable and undesirable classes, a report says.
In the span of a few months, the United States has been able to vaccinate almost 146 million citizens against COVID-19 and with this massive rollout comes the decision of whether the government should implement vaccine passports for its people.
China is already implementing such measures and Japan recently announced that they will issue vaccination certificates to their citizens to allow seamless travel in the future. Meanwhile, the U.S. is contemplating on how to issue a similar type of identification for traveling and work and leisure activities.
The U.S. has vaccinated more people than any other country in the world and according to CBS News, the Biden administration is looking to team up with Big Tech to rollout vaccine passports.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services's acting director Andy Slavitt said during the COVID-19 briefing at the White House on Monday, "This is going to hit all parts of society, and so naturally, the government is involved. But unlike other parts of the world, the government here is not viewing its role as the place to create a passport, nor a place to hold the data of citizens."
"We view this as something that the private sector is doing and will do," Slavitt explained. "What's important to us, and we're leading an interagency process right now to go through these details, are that some important criteria be met with these credentials."
White House press secretary Jen Psaki explained, "We expect that a determination or development of a vaccine passport will be driven by the private sector. Ours will more be focused on guidelines that can be used as a basis."
Psaki explained that Biden's vaccine passports will follow three key principles, the first and most important one being that there will not be any "centralized, universal federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential."
However, the potential of Biden's vaccine passport has garnered criticism from those who believe it will emulate that of China's system of control in which citizens earn credit scores. Those credit scores then dictate the level of freedoms Chinese citizens have in their own country.
How it's done in China
According to PJ Media, China's credit score scheme categorizes citizens into "trustworthy and untrustworthy" classes. Those in the "untrustworthy" class have lower credit scores and are prevented from traveling within and outside the country. Citizens are deemed "untrustworthy" and receive lower scores if they engage in "spreading rumors" on social media, participating in a "cult" or religious organization that isn't endorsed by the CCP, and other offenses.
If Biden's vaccine passport is designed in the likeness of China's system of control, people can expect further censorship from Big Tech, the same companies that the current administration is relying on to deliver such technology. The vaccine passport may also be a way of some sort of control over American citizens, which is against federal law and is a hindrance to the freedoms every American is entitled to under the Constitution.
