Health pass: how to control and avoid fraud?

SANITARY PASS

Cinemas, museums, swimming pools, and soon restaurants or bars/cafes must restrict their access only to people with a health pass. But without verifying the identity. To overcome this problem, new control methods could complement the existing system.

Especially since with TousAntiCovid, it is possible to import the vaccination or test certificates of different people. Parents can for example add the certificate of their vaccinated teenager in addition to their own proof of health pass in the notebook section of the application. What is more, when he was invited to 1 p.m. on TF1 on July 21, Prime Minister Jean Castex exempted restaurateurs and other managers of establishments concerned by the health pass from checking the identity of customers. The tenant of Matignon has indeed considered that these are “second level controls”. The bill on health crisis management adopted by Parliament on July 25 then entrusts the police with the task of check identity documents.

An app in development to control both the pass and the identity

Except that these checks will be random and will therefore not be systematic. This seems insufficient to limit the risk of health pass fraud. “A pass where there is no systematic control is a family Netflix subscription”, even quipped the Minister of Solidarity and Health Olivier Véran last week before the senators of the law commission. To remedy this, the Otentik business network has developed a new application: French Quick Pass. The goal? Allow restaurants, cinemas, theaters, museums, municipal swimming pools or sports halls to ensure that the scanned QR codes belong to the people in front of the controllers. And without wasting time.

“If we give up the identity check, then the pass no longer has any interest,” adds Yves Le Querrec, secretary general of the International Association for the Governance of Electronic Seals (AIGCEV), which is contributing to the project. Technically French Quick Pass is a mobile application which, if it obtains the support of the health authorities to be deployed on a large scale, will be downloadable for free on smartphone (iOS or Android). Its aim is to generate a new QR code, still in line with European standards, accompanied by a photo of the holder of the health pass who will be checked.

Technically, once you have downloaded the French Quick Pass application on the phone, it will offer to attach the QR code of your vaccination or test certificate, as well as a photo or a scan of your identity card. then enter your email address. The authenticity of the documents is checked and then a new QR code is generated. This will be sent to the email address indicated earlier in the procedure. The personal data relating to the identity or the health pass are then destroyed.

Nothing to do with TousAntiCovid where it will be possible to import this new barcode into the notebook tab. Neither TAC Vérif which can always be used to scan the QR code and thus check whether the pass is valid or not. The novelty will be that once the barcode with TAC Vérif has been flashed, only the green or red color and the photo of the person holding the pass will appear. Neither the first name, nor the last name, nor the date of birth will be communicated contrary to the current operation. “We are not here to redo a health pass, but to streamline the controls and ensure that they are effective”, comments Yves Le Querrec. But despite several attempts to exchange with the Secretary of State for digital Cédric O, no follow-up has been given by his cabinet, regrets the secretary general of the AIGCEV. And in the current state of things, the application will not be able to see the light of day if it is not supported by the authorities, then validated by a favorable opinion from the National Commission for Computing and Freedoms (Cnil).

When contacted, the office of the State Secretariat for Digital Affairs claims not to close any doors to initiatives from the private sector. “There are solutions which will be authorized and which will be approved by the Ministry of Solidarity and Health as was done with TAC Vérif”, we promise.