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Swiss Covid Certificate – Technical documentation of the swiss Covid certificate
- tick_tock_tick 5y agoSeems complex for something that probably never going to see any real use.
- zuas 5y agoIt's supposed to go live next Monday / by the end of the month. We'll see. Let's just say im very skeptical when it comes to IT-projects of the Swiss government. They regularly waste 100s of millions of CHF on stuff that simply doesn't work. https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releases.msg-id-83428.html https://www.admin.ch/gov/en/start/documentation/media-releas...
- StavrosK 5y agoIt's already live in Greece (I just issued mine). The current government has taken the national bureaucracy from the stone age to the space age in something like three years. We used to have to go to the various services' offices to get whatever certificates we needed, then around a decade ago another government created dedicated physical services for certificates, validation and other such daily work. This government has created a website where all certificate issuance and most other government-related business is fully electronic, I kind of can't believe they've done such a good job for such a backwards country. I'm amazed.
- radicalbyte 5y agoI've been super impressed with the way your government has worked on this. They're awesome! We've had our app out for a couple of months now (based on tests). They've started a lot later but have been able to launch sooner (I believe that they're the first ones to go live).
- StavrosK 5y agoYeah, that bit is quite impressive! I also like how they handle international matters and diplomacy, but there are a few areas where their policies haven't been great. They're a conservative party, so they haven't handled things like police brutality, corruption, etc well.
- traspler 5y agoThe framework and broad specification came from the EU through their EU Green Pass project so we have at least reduced fuck-up risk ;) I was sceptical if they manage to actually deliver as fast as they promised especially as the EU guidelines and specs were were general/rough just a month ago.
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- Mediterraneo10 5y agoYou do have a point there. The EU is pitching COVID certificates as a way to restore travel in the bloc, but I can’t imagine they will be used in places other than airports/bus stations/train stations. The issue is that maintaining roadblocks along Schengen borders has incurred costs that countries don’t like to deal with long-term, and even with the roadblocks there have been a lot of gaps. I spent last summer cycling across Europe. I was fortunate in that all borders on my route were open, but I met a load of other cyclists who had crossed various Schengen borders illegally, because no one was checking traffic along some minor road through the fields. So, for people with their own transportation, you might manage an entire European summer holiday without anyone ever checking your COVID certificate.
- hestefisk 5y agoDenmark use a similar app called “Coronapas”. Works similar to the Swiss one, displaying latest test results and vaccine status. It’s currently required to enter any restaurants or public spaces and has been very successful in returning some degree of normality to the country. Singapore are trialing a similar solution where the “Trace Together” app displays my vaccine status, possible exposure as well as test results. Very efficient. Different countries, different traditions. The US seems quite opposed to federally enforcing vaccine registration and passports, yet they find it ok to conduct mass surveillance of its citizens (and foreigners). On the contrary, Germany have strict privacy laws; yet they push for digital vaccine passports.
- Mediterraneo10 5y agoDenmark is an outlier among EU countries in using an app for internal travel and activities. Many other EU countries have already reopened their restaurant sector without requiring any proof of vaccination.
- gregoriol 5y ago"It’s currently required to enter any restaurants or public spaces and has been very successful in returning some degree of normality to the country.", there seems to be a link between the app and the normality in this statement, but there actually is no link between the two: an app like this may have some impact at some longer term, to lighten another wave, but it doesn't have any effect on the current re-openings.
- JumpCrisscross 5y ago> something that probably never going to see any real use Loads of venues and events in New York are requiring an Excelsior pass. Some will allow persons with out-of-state IDs in with paperwork inspection, but that’s a slower line.
- michaelmior 5y agoInteresting. I'm not in NYC, so I haven't seen this. Upstate so far it just seems vaccination status is only affecting masking requirements and no one is actually checking.
- nnx 5y agoAbsolutely terrible for privacy to use a client-server architecture for this. Why can't this be purely client-validated like passport chips?
- xiphias2 5y ago,,COVID Certificate is the official app for storing and presenting COVID certificates issued in Switzerland. The certificates are kept and checked locally on the user's phone.'' It seems like the server is needed for getting / revoking certificates, not for the verification.
- tonfa 5y ago> Why can't this be purely client-validated like passport chips? From the diagram this looks similar. The client-server is to fetch the certs and revocations, and handle the signing infrastructure.
- traspler 5y agoIt‘s as distributed & offline as can be. You could easily print the QR code out and the validator can be offline; the validation still works fine. The validator should have to connect to the network periodically to check for revocations, otherwise everything can be done offline. Issuance, Revocations & cross country validation requires some kind of backbone but even issuers don‘t have to be centralized if you want. The only thing you need is to get an issuer cert from that central trust authority and you can start issuing passes that are valid. Currently it still requires a government ID in addition to the pass so it‘s even more „offline“. The specs have room to enable eID solutions though but that will probably be online only as the verifiers will need to be specific for every provider.
- KptMarchewa 5y agoWhy do you need revocations of vaccine status? Can you become unvaxed?
- imrehg 5y agoThe inoculation certificate validity is currently 180 days since the last jab (looking at the slide deck in the repo). That seems super short. Will people really need 2 courses of jabs each year (that is 4 jabs with most current vaccines)?
- khuey 5y agoNobody knows for sure at this point but the prospects for long-term vaccine-derived immunity look really good so probably not.
- thepangolino 5y agoThey pretty much have to keep this short. Anything more permanent and you open up the risk of "alternative" databases being build by nefarious third parties.
- traspler 5y agoHow does a short lifetime of the certs help with 3rd parties building these databases you mention?
- thepangolino 5y agoOnce the certificate becomes obsolete, it becomes useless and therefore needs to be reacquired. Same process with American SSNs, if they were depreciated very 6 months getting yours published wouldn’t be an issue.
- traspler 5y agoBut one of these passes is nearly worthless (in the sense of impersonation) if you don't also have a valid ID of the person it got issued to and you look the same. When my vaccination pass would "leak" then my name & birthdate would be leaked and they would know someone of that name and birthdate got vaccinated but other than that, they can't impersonate me as if they presented the pass they would be asked to show the corresponding ID as well.
- williesleg 5y agoI live for this shit. Need more tracking worldwide.
- throwaway121314 5y agonobody cares about covid anymore
- throwaway121314 5y agohaha downvote me germaphobes covid was never credible threat to begin with
- gglnx 5y agoThis will be same for the European Union Green Certificate (DGC): https://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/covid-19_en https://ec.europa.eu/health/ehealth/covid-19_en The German app and implentation will be on GitHub too: https://github.com/Digitaler-Impfnachweis https://github.com/Digitaler-Impfnachweis
- radicalbyte 5y agoIt has been renamed to DCC now :-) The apps and integration server are here: https://github.com/eu-digital-green-certificates https://github.com/eu-digital-green-certificates The schema and business rules are here: https://github.com/ehn-digital-green-development https://github.com/ehn-digital-green-development Come join us if you're interested in taking a look, it's quite interesting :)
- mensetmanusman 5y agoFrom the G7 agenda reporting: “ Last Friday morning, during an interview on Good Morning America, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the Biden administration was taking “a very close look” at the possibility of vaccine passports for travel into and out of the United States. However by Friday afternoon the Department of Homeland Security was clarifying Mayorkas’ statement. The DHS says there won’t be any federal vaccination database nor any mandate that requires people to get a single vaccination credential. It also said there are no plans for anything like a U.S. passport.” The U.S. is suspicious of many types of documentation. E.g. none needed for voting in many areas, etc. The culture tends towards erring on less bureaucracy. If more states ban covid-passports, I wonder if the EU would rather not have tourists than allow visitations. Once there is a vaccine surplus, the vast amount of risk is on those who decide out of their own volition to not get vaccinated, at which point society can’t hold their hands anymore.
- leipert 5y agoWell a COVID pass would still be useful inside the EU, e.g. I can leave the yellow vaccination pass at home, can show it when coming home from outside of the EU or if I go somewhere where a negative test or vaccination is required.
- m_st 5y agoWe Swiss people are also quite suspicious with this kind of documentation (Google Fichenaffäre / secret files scandal for reasons). To my understanding you will get this Covid certificate either through vaccination, after having had Covid-19 or after a negative test. So it's not like a central vaccine database or so. (Note that we had such a database called "Elektronischer Impfausweis" but it had to be taken down after it was found to be a mess in security)
- zhdc1 5y agoAmericans are far more distrustful. The idea of registering with your local municipality is downright alien in the United States. At best, you're required to eventually update your drivers license when you switch states, which (depending on the state) is the equivalent of "maybe" updating your license and vehicle registration whenever you eventually get around to it. Compare that against moving between, say, Switzerland and Poland (or any other combination of Schengen member countries).
- boredumb 5y agoPapers please, comrade.
- cm2187 5y agoWill there be an international format for vaccine certificates or are border controls expected to implement every certificate format for every issuing country for incoming travellers?
- occamrazor 5y agoThe aim is to have a single system for EU+EFTA (not sure about UK).
- h0nd 5y agoI am from Switzerland and I would like to be certified to be free of anxiety disorder regarding Covid.
- varanauskas 5y agoI recently did a write up [1] of the Lithuanian vaccine certificate after finding a flaw on it. What impressed me was that the verification was done fully offline in a privacy preserving way [1] https://tadas.varanauskas.lt/posts/forging-lithuanian-vaccine-certificate https://tadas.varanauskas.lt/posts/forging-lithuanian-vaccin...
- h0nd 5y agoWhereas the technological aspect and questions are very interesting, this certificate has the sole purpose to divide the people. I am devastated to see this coming.