11 ms·

It's honestly fascinating to me that this is going to be the way we meet Privacy vs Security face to face more broadly. Intrapersonally, they might go hand in h

It's honestly fascinating to me that this is going to be the way we meet Privacy vs Security face to face more broadly. Intrapersonally, they might go hand in hand, but in the group setting, they seem almost at direct odds. Security (or safety) requires some social contracts to be fulfilled. When these social contracts aren't enough we start to see polices and law take up the slack. Our existing privacy laws and regulations (e.g. HIPPA compliance) could be argued to be too strict, whereas at the same time, we're in an age of spyware / ad-tracking which is in dire need of curtailment.

paxys 5y ago
Is this really pushing the envelope though? Routine drug testing by employers, for example, has been considered totally acceptable by society for decades now. I'd consider a one-time proof of vaccination against a deadly pandemic to be far less intrusive than that.
- chitowneats 5y ago
  Before this year I think most would have agreed that requiring an injection of a novel pharmaceutical is more intrusive than a non-medically invasive test of urine or hair follicle.
- briefcomment 5y ago
  Having to put something in your body is different than most requirements. Only thing that's close is childhood vaccination I guess.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    They can drug test you. Isn't that just controlling what you are allowed to put in your body?
    - briefcomment 5y ago
      You're not compelled to put something in your body.
- version_five 5y ago
  Is routine drug testing universally considered acceptable? If I'm going to be a pilot, maybe. For a developer job, I would never consider one that asked for a drug test (I don't use drugs just to be clear, my objection is to a company having any say in what people do on their own time). People complain about having to do a coding test during the interview process, but somehow it's ok to verify that you don't smoke pot on the weekends?
  - nixpulvis 5y ago
    I've been drug tested for corporate programming jobs before. I wouldn't say it's the norm in our industry though and this may be even less common now, IDK. But I do feel like there's a distinction between a urine test and a vaccine, since it's impossible to have a negative reaction to a piss test. As a fully vaccinated individual, I still dislike the idea of having to disclose this fact. Not for any logical reason I can personally attribute, but just because I'm used to not wanting to discuss my personal medical history in a professional setting. Perhaps this is actually worth changing, given how fucked up our medical system is here (USA). Just because something is new doesn't make it bad. What worries me though is backlash for the tiny fraction of population that actually can't take the vaccine for whatever reason. This line of reasoning falls apart pretty quickly after this point, since if you look for it, you can come up with whatever reasons you want for fearing the vaccine and therefor not taking it. At the end of the day you just need to trust that some things work as designed and that you are probably stronger than you think you are. Sorry I ended up going off on a tangent here.
    - version_five 5y ago
      I have never done a drug test but had to disclose very invasive information for security clearances in the past. But in those cases I made a voluntary choice to work in a particularly interesting area. I also have both my vaccine shots and got them as soon as I possibly could. What I worry about is the idea of being compelled to do it, and of being compelled like you say to provide sensitive information for employment. It's better to push against something that you agree with the goal but are uncomfortable with the methods than wait until you have to fight against something you disagree with entirely. I would have to think very hard before taking a job where I had to prove to anyone I was vaccinated. My view is that focusing on increasing voluntary vaccinations to the point that it doesnt matter is the answer. Giving up to authoritarianism just this once is not a useful precedent to set.
- throwaway199998 5y ago
  You're subhuman and mentally ill, this is far from deadly if you got your stupid vaccine. Even if you didn't, frankly.
- rualca 5y ago
  > Is this really pushing the envelope though? Routine drug testing by employers, for example, has been considered totally acceptable by society for decades now. I don't know what's the experience in the US, but in my home country everyone has a little booklet they carry with them since pretty much birth where we register not only when we took vaccines, such as measles or tetanus or hepatitis, but also when we should take the booster shots. Oddly enough, the booklet looks a bit like a passport. Well, a passport is also a log, right? So I'm kind of baffled why some people claim this is a radical turn of events.
  - ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
    The radical change is when you make access to events, places and employment conditional on this passport's contents.
    - hef19898 5y ago
      The radical change is that previous generations took, at scale, vaccines against Polio and Small Pox. To the point these diseases don't matter really anymore. Today we tend to prioritize personal inconvenience over a truely greater good.
- gpvos 5y ago
  Drug testing by employers may be broadly accepted in the USA, but not in Europe.
- tremon 5y ago
  But what makes you think the vaccination will be one-time? There's plenty of indicators the Covid-19 vaccine is only effective for a limited number of months, so -if it turns out to be more like a flu vaccine than a measles vaccine- should we then continuously be able to prove that we got a booster shot in the last 6 months?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Bryan22 5y ago
  It's not the 'proof' part of "proof of vaccination" that's the problem. It's compelling an employee to put a foreign substance into their body. This is also much different than requiring an employee NOT ingest a substance. The situation you've created here is akin to restricted speech vs compelled speech (drug test the former, vaccine the latter).
colechristensen 5y ago
HIPPA is absolutely not too strict, it has many fundamental holes which need to be plugged. I am vaccinated but the only place I am willing to prove it is at an airport or a medical facility. There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far. Going along with the irrational ways so many people talk about vaccination I am not willing to give up an inch of liberty to the hivemind. No “papers please” to allow me to participate in normal society where the group in power gets to decide if I’m acceptable.
- bdhess 5y ago
  > HIPPA is absolutely not too strict, it has many fundamental holes which need to be plugged. Citation needed? It’s HIPAA, by the way; one P and two As. > There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far. Total drivel. I’m sick of lockdowns and mask mandates. If you’re legally and medically eligible for a vaccine and you haven’t gotten one, I’m happy for private businesses to refuse you service.
  - colechristensen 5y ago
    >Citation needed? https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/02/20/dna-databases-are-boon-to-police-but-menace-to-privacy-critics-say https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta... There is an example. There has been a proliferation of for-profit companies offering health-related services which aren't counted as healthcare providers which a freely selling and distributing personal data for profit, to law enforcement, and accidentally because they are "not medicine" but in reality they are indeed collecting data about your health and giving you tools, information, and advice as a result of that data. Companies covered by HIPAA are also sharing your health data extensively either through authorizations which don't very well describe the sharing which is actually happening, or freely without notification or approval as "deidentified" data which has been shown time and again to be rather trivial to unmask deidentified records to figure out the person in question.
    - 5y ago
tdeck 5y ago
I had to pass a background check to start work at Google, my employer before Google, and my employer after. If anything that was much more intrusive than "prove you're vaccinated".
- blub 5y ago
  This goes back to the generally weak worker protections in the US. Background checks are a pretty hostile approach for most jobs, since after all it is assumed that the person which was convicted paid their debt to society. Sure, for certain kinds of positions like working as a lawyer or in a bank, or working with kids perhaps it makes sense, but for programmers working on consumer and B2B software it's a stretch. In many countries there has to be a justified reason to request a criminal record certificate. As for the vaccine, the employer has no business knowing or demanding anything related to the health of an employee, unless that thing is directly affecting their performance. Lack of vaccination does no such thing.
  - Broken_Hippo 5y ago
    To be fair: Background checks, in the US, aren't limited to criminal records. First and foremost, sometimes checks include arrests (without conviction, or a not guilty verdict) if the company chooses the wrong background check company. The government doesn't regulate them very well. But it can be things like a google search for you (Which means that a protest you went to could mean you "aren't a good fit for the company."). It can be a credit check: I had to pass a credit check to work at a gas station once. The district manager was convinced that bad credit meant you were more likely to steal. Very, very often - and more often than a criminal background check - is a drug test. I didn't take a job that did pre-employment hair follicle tests, mostly because the person in the room with me explained she had a drug problem in the past. She had been clean for 2-3 years clean and was willing to take regular drug tests. But they said the tests went back further than that, and no job if the hair follicle test wasn't passed (I think there are now laws that would have protected her). Urine tests are more common, though. And a slew of employers do random drug tests - some call centers, for example, might do random hair follicle or urine tests (Student loan collections do this in some places). It doesn't matter if it would affect your job or not. This is all mostly because there is no law protecting it: The behavior would be illegal where I live now. Now, with vaccinations: Employers do have a little bit of business knowing health concerns if it can affect workplace safety in ways that can make other employees or customers fall sick. They already do this to some degree in, say, foodservice. For example, I know a food factory here (That I worked at temporarily) that requires stool sample tests and time off work if you have any sort of vomiting or diarrhea - you know, because it can make others sick.

paxys 5y ago

Is this really pushing the envelope though? Routine drug testing by employers, for example, has been considered totally acceptable by society for decades now. I'd consider a one-time proof of vaccination against a deadly pandemic to be far less intrusive than that.

chitowneats 5y ago
Before this year I think most would have agreed that requiring an injection of a novel pharmaceutical is more intrusive than a non-medically invasive test of urine or hair follicle.
briefcomment 5y ago
Having to put something in your body is different than most requirements. Only thing that's close is childhood vaccination I guess.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  They can drug test you. Isn't that just controlling what you are allowed to put in your body?
  - briefcomment 5y ago
    You're not compelled to put something in your body.
version_five 5y ago
Is routine drug testing universally considered acceptable? If I'm going to be a pilot, maybe. For a developer job, I would never consider one that asked for a drug test (I don't use drugs just to be clear, my objection is to a company having any say in what people do on their own time). People complain about having to do a coding test during the interview process, but somehow it's ok to verify that you don't smoke pot on the weekends?
- nixpulvis 5y ago
  I've been drug tested for corporate programming jobs before. I wouldn't say it's the norm in our industry though and this may be even less common now, IDK. But I do feel like there's a distinction between a urine test and a vaccine, since it's impossible to have a negative reaction to a piss test. As a fully vaccinated individual, I still dislike the idea of having to disclose this fact. Not for any logical reason I can personally attribute, but just because I'm used to not wanting to discuss my personal medical history in a professional setting. Perhaps this is actually worth changing, given how fucked up our medical system is here (USA). Just because something is new doesn't make it bad. What worries me though is backlash for the tiny fraction of population that actually can't take the vaccine for whatever reason. This line of reasoning falls apart pretty quickly after this point, since if you look for it, you can come up with whatever reasons you want for fearing the vaccine and therefor not taking it. At the end of the day you just need to trust that some things work as designed and that you are probably stronger than you think you are. Sorry I ended up going off on a tangent here.
  - version_five 5y ago
    I have never done a drug test but had to disclose very invasive information for security clearances in the past. But in those cases I made a voluntary choice to work in a particularly interesting area. I also have both my vaccine shots and got them as soon as I possibly could. What I worry about is the idea of being compelled to do it, and of being compelled like you say to provide sensitive information for employment. It's better to push against something that you agree with the goal but are uncomfortable with the methods than wait until you have to fight against something you disagree with entirely. I would have to think very hard before taking a job where I had to prove to anyone I was vaccinated. My view is that focusing on increasing voluntary vaccinations to the point that it doesnt matter is the answer. Giving up to authoritarianism just this once is not a useful precedent to set.
throwaway199998 5y ago
You're subhuman and mentally ill, this is far from deadly if you got your stupid vaccine. Even if you didn't, frankly.
rualca 5y ago
> Is this really pushing the envelope though? Routine drug testing by employers, for example, has been considered totally acceptable by society for decades now. I don't know what's the experience in the US, but in my home country everyone has a little booklet they carry with them since pretty much birth where we register not only when we took vaccines, such as measles or tetanus or hepatitis, but also when we should take the booster shots. Oddly enough, the booklet looks a bit like a passport. Well, a passport is also a log, right? So I'm kind of baffled why some people claim this is a radical turn of events.
- ad404b8a372f2b9 5y ago
  The radical change is when you make access to events, places and employment conditional on this passport's contents.
  - hef19898 5y ago
    The radical change is that previous generations took, at scale, vaccines against Polio and Small Pox. To the point these diseases don't matter really anymore. Today we tend to prioritize personal inconvenience over a truely greater good.
gpvos 5y ago
Drug testing by employers may be broadly accepted in the USA, but not in Europe.
tremon 5y ago
But what makes you think the vaccination will be one-time? There's plenty of indicators the Covid-19 vaccine is only effective for a limited number of months, so -if it turns out to be more like a flu vaccine than a measles vaccine- should we then continuously be able to prove that we got a booster shot in the last 6 months?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Bryan22 5y ago
It's not the 'proof' part of "proof of vaccination" that's the problem. It's compelling an employee to put a foreign substance into their body. This is also much different than requiring an employee NOT ingest a substance. The situation you've created here is akin to restricted speech vs compelled speech (drug test the former, vaccine the latter).

colechristensen 5y ago

HIPPA is absolutely not too strict, it has many fundamental holes which need to be plugged. I am vaccinated but the only place I am willing to prove it is at an airport or a medical facility. There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far. Going along with the irrational ways so many people talk about vaccination I am not willing to give up an inch of liberty to the hivemind. No “papers please” to allow me to participate in normal society where the group in power gets to decide if I’m acceptable.

bdhess 5y ago
> HIPPA is absolutely not too strict, it has many fundamental holes which need to be plugged. Citation needed? It’s HIPAA, by the way; one P and two As. > There is a developing liberty/security divide which is going very much in the direction of far too far. Total drivel. I’m sick of lockdowns and mask mandates. If you’re legally and medically eligible for a vaccine and you haven’t gotten one, I’m happy for private businesses to refuse you service.
- colechristensen 5y ago
  >Citation needed? https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2020/02/20/dna-databases-are-boon-to-police-but-menace-to-privacy-critics-say https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/sta... There is an example. There has been a proliferation of for-profit companies offering health-related services which aren't counted as healthcare providers which a freely selling and distributing personal data for profit, to law enforcement, and accidentally because they are "not medicine" but in reality they are indeed collecting data about your health and giving you tools, information, and advice as a result of that data. Companies covered by HIPAA are also sharing your health data extensively either through authorizations which don't very well describe the sharing which is actually happening, or freely without notification or approval as "deidentified" data which has been shown time and again to be rather trivial to unmask deidentified records to figure out the person in question.
  - 5y ago

tdeck 5y ago

I had to pass a background check to start work at Google, my employer before Google, and my employer after. If anything that was much more intrusive than "prove you're vaccinated".

blub 5y ago
This goes back to the generally weak worker protections in the US. Background checks are a pretty hostile approach for most jobs, since after all it is assumed that the person which was convicted paid their debt to society. Sure, for certain kinds of positions like working as a lawyer or in a bank, or working with kids perhaps it makes sense, but for programmers working on consumer and B2B software it's a stretch. In many countries there has to be a justified reason to request a criminal record certificate. As for the vaccine, the employer has no business knowing or demanding anything related to the health of an employee, unless that thing is directly affecting their performance. Lack of vaccination does no such thing.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  To be fair: Background checks, in the US, aren't limited to criminal records. First and foremost, sometimes checks include arrests (without conviction, or a not guilty verdict) if the company chooses the wrong background check company. The government doesn't regulate them very well. But it can be things like a google search for you (Which means that a protest you went to could mean you "aren't a good fit for the company."). It can be a credit check: I had to pass a credit check to work at a gas station once. The district manager was convinced that bad credit meant you were more likely to steal. Very, very often - and more often than a criminal background check - is a drug test. I didn't take a job that did pre-employment hair follicle tests, mostly because the person in the room with me explained she had a drug problem in the past. She had been clean for 2-3 years clean and was willing to take regular drug tests. But they said the tests went back further than that, and no job if the hair follicle test wasn't passed (I think there are now laws that would have protected her). Urine tests are more common, though. And a slew of employers do random drug tests - some call centers, for example, might do random hair follicle or urine tests (Student loan collections do this in some places). It doesn't matter if it would affect your job or not. This is all mostly because there is no law protecting it: The behavior would be illegal where I live now. Now, with vaccinations: Employers do have a little bit of business knowing health concerns if it can affect workplace safety in ways that can make other employees or customers fall sick. They already do this to some degree in, say, foodservice. For example, I know a food factory here (That I worked at temporarily) that requires stool sample tests and time off work if you have any sort of vomiting or diarrhea - you know, because it can make others sick.