Hacker News Reader

Comment by Quigglez | Hacker News Reader

What is the device required referenced in 'A'? My mind might just be missing something obvious, but I'm drawing a blank.

View on HN

A smart-phone of one of the two supported corporate-controlled OSs, iOS or Android.

So then what's the law referenced in 'A' that requires me to buy and carry around a smartphone?

In NL I have to show a QR code to enter certain facilities.

Which can be printed on paper?

This is true. I would need to print twice a week and I don't own a printer.

In the UK, you can have it posted to you, so you don't need a printer.

Does this work for a 'permit to enter' which is only valid 24hrs?

Only a CoronaCeck test result certificate is valid for 24 hours. Certificates of vaccination and recovery are valid for much longer (https://coronacheck.nl/en/faq/1-4-hoe-lang-is-mijn-coronabew...).

Are there places which are legally required to only accept test result certificates?

> Are there places which are legally required to only accept test result certificates?

Not in NL. Why does this matter?

For me, elective medical procedures and air travel required a recent (<24h) test result, vaccination was not sufficient.

For now. As an example, there are Amazon Prime discounts available at Whole Foods, and this QR code which asserts your membership cannot be printed because it embeds an OTP-like temporal code which changes every 60 seconds.

Any QR code which can be printed, can be copied. There's a vested interest for the operators of these systems to reduce the copyability of these codes (think: vaccine passports). Embedding a temporal code, changing the QR code every few minutes, and invalidating old codes, essentially OTP, is the most straightforward and industry standard way of doing this; it's inevitable.

Yes.

It's a looking-forward statement... projecting current trends 5-10 years in the future. More likely will be a de-facto requirement to participate in society rather than a law. As I mentioned in another comment, many private companies are already requiring it.

Okay, so not in the present tense, like the commenter indicated. And not like actually "legally".

Yes, first line says this:

    We are right now in the process of…

"Legally" part looks like a stretch goal to me, however.

In modern republics there is the practise of turning custom into law[0] by the generalized social manifestation of said custom, without said law having been enacted by a legislative body such as congress. All it takes is one judge setting the precedent.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Customary_law

In edge case matters not defined by current law, sometimes.

But precedents that simply overturn other laws -- or as applies to the matter at hand, in the United States at least: the 4th Amendment - no.

Another forward-looking statement might be that "governments will require constant 24-hour curfews 10 years from now". After all, that's just projecting and extrapolating from recent historical events (temporary movement restrictions, or lockdowns).

Anyone can make "forward looking statements". If they're going to be useful and not dismissed as hysterical fear-mongering, then it helps if they're actually credible.

Choosing to ignore clear trends is a strategy as well. I put away the smartphone for several weeks this year, was surprised how many things it discouraged and a few times prevented.

> it helps if they're actually credible

In some societies, "ability and availability to install mobile applications" is now taken for granted. This comes from the fact that in some societies the vast majority of the members take sheepish "what others do must be right" behaviour as granted. Those mentalities are enablers for regulations that may claim to mirror alleged "de facto" situations - making relevant prospects credible.

Surely many state supported sacrifices to privacy of the recent times (in some regions) were "supported" with "Don't they have FB anyway?" (thing is, of course, no they don't - a few would never).

> projecting and extrapolating from recent historical events

When some of the «recent historical events» come in "support" of already established desiderata of some parts (say, cashless society - to be intended as option dropping), creating an acceleration towards said trends, then they get relevant.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com