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Comment by emteycz | Hacker News Reader

I am required to show a QR code to eat.

...to eat at a restaurant. You can shop at a supermarket and eat at home. The thing is that yes, during the pandemic (and only then) for reasons of public health and safety, society has deemed this small violation of privacy necessary.

I can't cook when I work.

Yeah, no, being logged everywhere you go is not "small".

In Germany you can also just show the Europäischer Impfausweis (official yellow booklet containing all your vaccinations) that doesn't contain any QR codes.

Not in Berlin. Only the digital version is allowed for entry to those places.

Source: https://www.rbb24.de/panorama/thema/corona/beitraege/2021/09...

Can't you just show the paper with the proof of vaccination? Like I might not have a smartphone but I have the paper and ID card in my wallet.

And the paper has a QR code and the checking application makes a request to a state-run server with its data (including owner ID).

That's incorrect, the verification happens fully locally. The check app occasionally has to update trusted certificates but otherwise it runs locally. No personal data is sent to any kind of server.

Until it auto updates.

If it even matches the source as is. Play Store and App Store are non reproducible.

Do you pay cash when you go to restaurants or shopping? If you pay electronically then why do you trust the payment system? (it is not open source,reproducible and for sure your purchases contain much more data then what you imply the QR code scanner collects)

Yes. And meal tickets for most people here - so cash equivalent.

Many Germans refuse to use anything but cash for that very reason, so this isn't a very strong argument.

Yes.

It's on f-droid with reproducible builds.

Obviously there's a risk that the person scanning the QR code does shady things with it but it's rather unlikely the app itself will. It would be caught really quickly.

It depends on location, I doubt some shop or restaurant worker will bother to scan your paper and upload it to the government. QR code scanning should work without Internet I bet if you (the group that thinks it is a conspiracy not you personally) could just disassemble the Android app and see exactly what it sends and to who.

Yeah they don't bother, but that's illegal and the state is trying its best to force them to scan it.

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