Google/Samsung Pay to digitally store Covid vaccination info
Instead of carrying around a ridiculously sized vaccination card, or a laminated copy (if you took Staples up on their offer,) Samsung Pay now allows you to add your vaccination records and securely share when needed. Google’s Passes API was updated last month to allow similar, but has not rolled out yet as far as I can tell.
Samsung’s offering requires a third party app (CommonHealth,) to get, generate, and store the record initially, and it appears that CommonHealth requires the health service or group that gave you the vaccination to upload the records. I fully expect governors attempting to block by executive action the consensual sharing of health information in any capacity that could be related to the particular virus we’re fighting now starting in 3…2…1.
This, along with Google & Apple’s anonymous contract tracing API are the latest software developments that could be used to curtail a crisis, that probably won’t be used in any useful fashion because people will be arguing about the requirements thereof to infinity, and without end-point software that can verify that the person looking at the pass isn’t being given a picture instead of an app presentation, don’t know that this is going to be more than yet another idea that isn’t implemented.
Google’s Passes API, I do not see documentation on how they’re planning on storing the information but it would be related to Google Pay from what I am reading and probably accessible via displayed QR code.
No word on how the people who are supposed to check this can tell that they’re not looking at a JPG in someone’s image gallery.
[Android Police | Google | XDA Developers]
