When passports can threaten your freedom

Is the world sleepwalking into captivity? Governments are proposing vaccination certificates as the key to resuming normal life, but critics see them as an infringement of liberty. The junior MP did not mince his words. “If I am ever asked, on the streets of London, or in any other venue, public or private, to produce my ID card… when I am simply ambling along and breathing God’s fresh air like any other freeborn Englishman, then I will take that card out of my wallet and physically eat it.” That declaration was made in 2004 by Boris Johnson. Now his government is considering “Covid passports” that will show whether people have either been vaccinated, recently tested negative for the virus or developed natural immunity. The aim, the government says, is to allow people to attend concerts and sporting events. But there is speculation that the scheme could become much wider. Other countries are looking into – or already implementing – such measures. France is considering a “health pass”, while Germany announced on Sunday that vaccinated people would be allowed to travel without quarantine, shop and visit hairdressers with minimal restrictions. Israel has come up with a “Green Pass” and Denmark a “Coronapas” for leisure activities. China has built a vaccine passport system into its WeChat app, and Bahrain has introduced an app showing when someone has had two doses of a jab. Italy has a national contact-tracing app that tracks people through their phones. What worries commentators on the left and right alike is that these measures are being introduced without proper debate. Governments, they say, are exploiting our fear of the virus to curtail liberties in ways which would have been unthinkable at the start of last year. The biggest threat from “biosecurity”, Fraser Nelson argues in The Telegraph, lies in the “precautionary principle”. Once a government would have had to prove that emergency measures were absolutely necessary; now they are being brought in “just in case”, without consulting Parliament. “The definition of what government can ‘get away with’ is being expanded week after week… the old inalienable rights – freedom of assembly, of protest, of school education, to leave the country – become privileges to be removed or restored as ministers see fit.” In The Telegraph, the Conservative MP Graham Brady writes of a threat to “the common law tradition that we are free to do something unless there is a law that forbids it”. One of the first to warn of these developments was the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who in February last year denounced the spread of “techno-medical despotism”. He is particularly worried that social distancing will become permanent, hindering public debates and demonstrations. The “threshold that separates humanity from barbarism”, he argues, has already been crossed when we allow those we love to die alone. We are at the mercy, he says, of politicians who “tirelessly repeat, for the good of the frightened, that the object of their fear can never be defeated or eliminated.” But if we abandon civil liberties for mere survival, we are no better than cattle. Is the world sleepwalking into captivity? Dozy dupes? Some say, no. We are all aware of the compromises that have to be made in emergencies like the pandemic. Experience has shown the importance of quick decisions in dealing with Covid-19, and traditional parliamentary processes are just too slow. The fact that we are going along with these measures now does not mean that we would allow them to become permanent. Others point out that we have already accepted things we would once have thought beyond the pale. How could we possibly allow governments to stop us leaving our homes, travelling abroad or seeing our loved ones? Worse still, opposition parties are not standing up to them. We need a better global discussion about what is happening so swiftly before our eyes. KeywordsBahrain - An island country in the Middle East with a population of 1.7 million.