🗓️ For MONTHS Govnt ruled out Covid passes for domestic use.
Today Baroness @SalBrinton asked why there are plans for "unreliable tests as the mainstay for its passport scheme when ministers and experts have said this is wrong?"
👀 "Can the Minister guarantee maximum transparency during the review - and commercial #lobbying for such certificates in particular..?"
Baroness Chakrabarti warns of the risks of Covid passes to discrimination and privacy rights.
🤔 If no final decisions have been made, why has Zuhlke - the same company that built the ditched centralised #TestandTrace app - been awarded contracts WITHOUT competitive tendering to build Covid passes into the NHS app with centralised systems?
🗣️Facebook + Twitter’s content moderation policies have risked stifling open debate on public health policies over the last year.
Today, a Parliamentary Committee looking at free speech online asked the platforms what competency they have to play judge & jury on public debate⬇️
Head of UK Public Policy at #Twitter was asked about why the platform marked a Tweet by a Professor of medicine at @harvardmed as "misleading" and limited the users' ability to share the Tweet.
How qualified was a fact-checker for Facebook to decide a Professor from @UniofOxford published 'false' information?
🚨BREAKING: The COVID-status certificate ‘trials’ are not going ahead.
It’s unclear if they ever truly existed.
Thread! 🧵
At the start of April, the Government said it would trial COVID-status certificates to allow entry to 9 ‘pilot’ events in April and May... /1
However, reports conflicted on whether the COVID-status certificates to be trialled would start with test results only - or the long-term plan for vaccine, test and antibody statuses. /2
The 1st event was reported to be a comedy club in Liverpool. Only, the club had no idea about certification plans & had only signed up for testing research.
The owners tried to contact @DCMS, but got no reply.
The Prime Minister's statement tonight made it clear Covid passes are coming. Trials will go ahead within weeks. Millions of us tonight are wondering just how bad this "new normal" could be.
We will do everything in our power to prevent internal health passports going ahead.
And together, we're making great strides.
But if Covid passes do go ahead, we will not give up the fight - and we will pursue a legal challenge if we can.
We have a fantastic team of human rights lawyers at the ready...
Our director @silkiecarlo said: “Our common goal is to emerge from lockdown – healthy, safe and free. But we won’t arrive at freedom through exclusion” /1