abbcc comments

Dodo,

The solution you describe is entirely reasonable. In this case no user would need a device, because the border agents doing the checks would be the ones who needed access to the records. If people want a plastic vaccine card then we could have systems that just automatically pull up a DB record for a certain card; there's no downside and it would work equally well with an app.

Just using a website and a db like this would seem obvious. The issue is that this is not what is being done; everybody is making apps which would require me to accept either apple or Google's privacy policies as a condition of entry.

It is ridiculous that access to a country will be dependent on having installed an app.

Even if you own a smartphone, having access to the walled garden app stores requires one to agree to whatever arbitrary terms & privacy conditions apple or Google may demand. In the case of google, we have a company that is almost consistently being pulled in front of one court or another for inappropriately collecting user data. It is currently being sued by the US government for anticompetitive behaviour. Both companies have been criticised by the US government for anticompetitive behaviour associated with their app stores. Both companies are repeatedly criticised by governments for failure to pay reasonable amounts of tax.

And yet, here we are being told that we MUST use one of these two companies. We MUST entrench this duopoly. There is no reason this could not be implemented with a website which would be accessible to basically all devices since the 90's or even just a stamp in a passport which doesnt need charging. This failure to use the best tool for the job, in the interest of appearing to be keeping up with the times would be laughable were it not so depressing.