Should I go out for lunch before summer has ended? In some parts of the United States you can carry COVID- 19 card or a digital copy to get into restaurants, bars, nightclubs and outdoor music festivals.
After resisting the highly transmissible idea of vaccine passports through most of the pandemic, a fast-growing number of private venues and some local officials now require proof of immunization in public settings to reduce the spread of the highly private delta variant of the coronavirus.
It is unlikely that the U.S. will adopt a national mandate like in Greece, which on Monday required people to show a QR code proving they have a special virus pass before they can enjoy restaurants and cafes or travel across the country.
But enough venues are starting to ask for digital passes to worry some privacy advocates who fear the trend could habituate consumers to constant tracking.
Last week New York City set the tone when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the city will soon require proof of COVID - 19 vaccination for anyone who wants to dine indoors at a restaurant, see a performance or go to the gym.
But a growing number of private venues, from musical theaters to music clubs in Minneapolis and Milwaukee, have established similar rules for patrons.
'I'm a firm believer in the right to choose whether or not people get the vaccine, said Tami Montgomery, owner of Dru's Bar in Memphis, Tennessee, which starts asking for paper vaccination cards along with photo identification on Thursday. 'But it is my business and I have to make decisions based on what will protect my employees, business and customers.
Organizers of Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago said that on its opening day in late July more than 90% of some 100,000 attendees showed proof of vaccination, while most of the rest showed they'd recently had a negative COVID 19 test. Hundreds of others were turned away for lack of documents.
Only in a handful of states — Texas and Florida are the biggest — are private businesses prohibited from requiring proof of vaccination.
In some countries, vendors simply ask you to bring your vaccine card — the same piece of paper you get from health providers and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Taking a picture of that card at home and then showing the image to the bouncer at the club can also work.
New York City offers a streamlined way of showing a photo through the NYC COVID Safe app, in which people can store images of their vaccination cards and then display them in the app when needed.
Other places are encouraging people to register their credentials using a scanningnable digital pass like California, Hawaii and Louisiana's statewide Excelsior Pass or similar systems adopted by New York State and private companies like Walmart and the airport security app Clear.
Such passes are designed for convenience and to prevent fraud. But that's also where the biggest privacy concerns emerged, said Adam Schwartz, senior wing of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
The barcode known as QR code was originally designed to help track goods in a factory. Somewhere in the world tracking is still used. But what happened to the biometric device?
Those systems are a giant leap towards tracking people’s location, Schwartz said. There's a very real risk of mission creep once there are scanners at doors and people are showing their scannable token to pass through.
In the coalition that helped create the Smart Health Card framework, New York City and the Canadian province of Quebec say they've already set privacy safeguards to protect against misuse of health information.
Since a venue is using a VCI-compliant scanner, there shouldn't be anything to worry about, said Dr. Brian Anderson, chief digital health physician at MITRE and co-lead of the Vaccination Credential Initiative, which counts Apple, Microsoft and Mayo Clinic among its members. 'That app won't store an individual's information beyond the time that the QR code is scanned, he said.
Proponents of digital passports say they're more convenient for already-overcrowded restaurants and other venues because workers don't have to peer at everyone's vaccine cards before letting them in. Lines move faster and the digital scan reassures those who don't want to risk damage or loss to their paper cards. It's easily possible to fake a paper card or a photo of one.
The startup CrowdPass, which generates QR codes so vaccinated people can attend events, said it helped get about 15,000 people swiftly admitted into the Newport Folk and Newport Jazz festivals in Rhode Island. The events required attendees to digitally upload proof of comprehensive vaccination or a recent negative test.
Demand was slow at first, said Duncan Abdelnour, the startup's co-founder and president. 'But since delta variant has sprung, we have had an enormous uptick. Among its clients are married planning their weddings and the organizer of other smaller events. Abdelnour said the biggest spike in calls came after New York City's announcement.
It's a crowded market that includes apps made by Clear and Walmart, many of which have signed onto VCI's privacy standards and code of conduct.
For Schwartz of EFF, the best advice for venues that need to see proof of vaccination is to stick to asking for the CDC card or photo of it.
The process of making vaccination checks should end when the pandemic does, Schwartz said. 'Some of the companies who are in this space have a track record of being in the business of monetizing data, he added. 'I'm not going to name names, but they're the last people who need to be involved in developing scanners for proof of vaccination.