ABC - Authorization Based Citizenship
There is something unique about the COVID crisis. Unlike previous shocks like 9/11 or various market crashes, it is difficult to point to a singular event. Maybe, if one day we learn the truth about how it started, the day when the coronavirus leaped out of the Wuhan Lab or the one when a pangolin gave it to a chinese farmer, we will be able to point to this instant and label it as “the start of the COVID crisis”. But even then, the COVID crisis is more of the nature of a slow burning process than of a brutal impact. It is more insidious and harder to spot because you cannot pin down a specific instant. If you had to describe when the common approach to pandemics changed from having localized (in time and space) lockdown to a global policy, you are facing a complex task. You need to analyze many public speeches over weeks etc.
Nonetheless, the very nature of the society in which we are living (I am talking here as a westerner) has completely changed during this crisis. In this essay I defend the thesis that we are entering in a new era in which the basic paradigm is ABC: Authorization Based Citizenship.
Ausweis Bitte
The universal declaration of Human Rights is clear right from the start:
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience
The starting point is that, from a legal and moral point of view, all humans are equal. The normal state of affairs is that you don’t have to give any authorization to live your life unless you want to do something very specific like entering in a nuclear plant or in the home of someone else.
The multiplication of vaccines passports in the wake of the COVID crisis intalls a new normal in which you first have to prove that you have the credentials before being able to live your life. Entering shops, going to the movie theater, taking the bus, going to the hospital, playing a chess tournament etc. are all activities that are subjected to the “pass sanitaire” in France today. More and more it is not limited to having a vaccine passport, but you also need a proof of identity in order to prove that the passport that you are displaying is linked to you and not a one that has been shared with you.
We all know the justification: you could be infected and transmit the disease etc. I am not going to debate around this point in this essay. Clearly it is the smallest lip service you can do that bears any resemblance with a motivated decision anyway. Such justification does not stand the tiniest examination: for once vaccinated people may transmit the disease. But also it presupposes that being sick is the default mode (agains all statistical odds)… What I am going to discuss here is how civil life as we understood it is no longer the same today as it was understood before the COVID crisis.
The driving licence fallacy
One usual suspect in the discussion around the vaccines passport is the driving licence fallacy. The idea can be summarized as this one liner : you cannot complain that you are losing freedoms because when you drive a car you need a driving licence. The tactical idea is that there is nothing new under the sun, so shut up and show your ID. This is wrong at so many levels that I don’t know where to begin.
Of course an immediate difference between a health pass and a driving license is that the former is checked many times a day, not the latter. The pass is asked before you can do something. The presumption is a presumption of infection in this case. You are presumed to be covid contagious unless you can *prove* you are not. The definition of proof is of an administrative flavor: you have to have the approved papers.
Another difference is that, unless you do something bad, your driving licence remains valid. It is not the case with various passes that have a time limit that is baked in. You can even imagine to have the rights checked on real time. It is possible to generate one time authorizations (basically like an electronic train ticket). The limit of how you can restrict liberties is only limited by your imagination. In France there is a report of the senate (so not a document coming from a tinfoil hat conspiracy site) discussing future applications.
One, maybe not so subtle, key difference between a pass and a driving licence is that the driving licence is the proof that you have shown your abilities to perform a specific activity. We see that the passes are asked for nothing and everything in particular. For instance in France you have this weird definitions: the pass is needed as soon as there are more than 50 people at the same place. But it is not true for university for instance. I can give lectures without having to check passes. The theory was : if you have to display your pass, you are no longer mandated to have masks. But it is not true for intercity trains (where pass is required and masks also). I could fill screens with such self contradictory dispositions. One way to argue about those contradictions is that some activities are essentials (like going to university) and others not (like going to a restaurant). It is not without reminding the beginning of the crisis where it was forbidden to buy “non essential” features in shops. You had this weird situation in which underwear were not essential but socks for toddlers were… It is funny and a little bit horrific at the same time. Who decides what is “essential” from “non essential” ? Whod decides when the rule starts to apply ? For instance in France pass was not mandatory for minors until the 15th of september where it became mandatory over night. Surely the Sars-cov-2 virus is like a Mogwai/Gremlin and alter its behavior in the middle of the night ?
Argument of authority by other means
At this point the fact that vaccine passports mandate is the product of “follow the science” appears as it is: a semi polite way to say “shut up and obey”. There are still peripherical arguments like: it is an incentive to push people to accept vaccination. But they don’t pass the sniff test either. Every application of force to make citizen to comply could be painted as an incentive to do what they are summoned to do. The emperor has no clothes. At the end of the day the main argument is “because I told you so”. This is a second aspect of the ABC that appears. Some users are more equals than others. There are *super users*. They can decide for you what is essential/non essential and use the state aparatus to enforce it in real time. What we are witnessing is just the beginning and is a very crude use of new information technologies. You could link bank accounts etc. to x pass, where x is essentially whatever you decide as a super user. It is not without reminding how school, armies have been reshaped by the industrial revolution. Nowadays our society is reshaped by information technologies and citizenship more and more take the form of an operating system. The citizen becomes expendable. He is no longer the source of legitimacy but at the service of system efficiency.