Verification of Vaccine Cards
Several countries around the world are wanting people to have a way to verify that people who are coming into their country has gotten the vaccine. There have been a number of news articles of people who have faked the vaccine card for one reason or another usually just because they don’t feel like they need to get the vaccine. Requiring vaccine cards have never been new or original in traveling around the world. There has always been countries that require vaccines like rubella or Hepatitis B vaccine to enter their countries. We’ve seen many countries who would like to proof of vaccine and proven ways to knows that it’s not forged.
Stopping the forgery
Each country is wondering how they can stop the forgeries of vaccine cards. No country wants to have take financial responsibility for someone who might get really sick due to the covid19. This is why countries are really wanting way to provide a way to know that someone has gotten the vaccine. The problem is that some people think they really don’t need the vaccine because of herd immunity, so why are they so worried about it. It’s one way to know that their immune system has been given enough protection from getting the severe version of covid19. I am sure there are other reasons and that is what I always hear.
The IATA Travel Pass Verification
When I say that IATA could verify that each vaccine cards in the USA or other countries to be authentic, is saying something that no other airline could do. If countries are looking to verify that the vaccine cards from countries that don’t want to share their vaccine data due to laws, such as the US. They can at least do some minor things while you register for a vaccine passport on their IATA travel pass app. I’m going to talk in length about this so please be patient and maybe someone will actually implement this in the IATA Travel Pass app.
There are several ways they can verify the picture of the vaccine passport to be authentic. They can have the Iata travel pass do image searches to see if there are images that are unique or close to the same exact type that is being submitted. There are several ways you can do that:
These are only two of several ways they can search the web and find out if it is not authentic or original, from the vaccine card that is being submitted.
Images not on the Internet
What if the criminals are being sneaking and keeping these cards off the internet. What options do the Iata Pass have to verify that it isn’t be used in other countries or accounts on the IATA travel pass? This is where it gets really interesting because there are several ways that can be used to verify that the vaccine card hasn’t been used in the past. They can get the Hash Value of the picture and store it in their servers for later on. Don’t worry, the hash value doesn’t save the picture on the server but keeps a copy of the hash value so they can search for that value and probably even keeps the account that it is associated with it for security reasons.
As you can see it’s is really an easy process for phones around the world to hash a picture and send the hash to server to either use it to search for a copy or to record it so no other person can use it. I really suggest you go check out the pyimagesearch site and see all the ways that can be used to search for a duplicate hash. This would be a great resource for people to authenticate if they have a unique vaccine card or not.
Examine the Metadata
Metadata is according to Google “a set of data that describes and gives information about other data.” Basically when you take pictures with your phone, your phone records what type of phone was being used and many different things sometimes including the GPS location of the image being take. So they can examine the metadata and see a lot of stuff from the submitted picture of the vaccine card is coming from and also keep record of that information also in a database for reference for obvious reasons. They can also prevent photos being used if they have been edited before uploaded, for example there is a good little photo editor like Snapseed. It’s a great little app that can be used in Android devices to edit or change a photo.
Once it has been edited the metadata would show that it was edited by snapseed or any other photo editing software and thus should be thrown out for security reasons like that. So if someone is trying to get around the vaccine authentication they probably would have a very hard time in verifying there vaccine card.
This is what I would think should be implemented when making the IATA travel pass to help governments to know that the vaccine cards are as authentic as possible. I won’t say that people will not come up with ways to still submit forgeries, that will always be a problem. It however will make it more difficult for people to do that. It is my hope that we won’t have to use this for very long and this would just be a stop gap way to get travelers back to traveling around the world.
What do you think about this idea? Do you think they did this or do you think they will do this in the future? What’s your experience with the IATA travel pass?
