NEWS PROVIDED BY
Liberty Counsel
May 25, 2021
SALEM, Ore., May 25, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ -- Oregon is pushing freedom-killing vaccine passports by demanding churches and businesses discriminate based on COVID "vaccine" status. Governor Kate Brown has now implemented a statewide policy to require proof of COVID shots for people to enter businesses, workplaces, and churches without wearing masks.
Vaccine passports predated COVID, but COVID is being used to push a dangerous, freedom-killing agenda that give increase to Big Brother, decreases freedom, and ushers in George Orwell's "1984" to a present reality.
Vaccine passports can be paper, a digital code or app that records and displays the user's health information, including COVID injection status. Digital health or vaccine passports display a scannable code similar to an airline boarding pass. Tracking and tracing apps monitor the user's movement and interactions with other people. The tracking and tracing app in Israel alerts the user who may be exposed to COVID and can direct the user to quarantine. The app will issue a warning if the user moves outside of the quarantine zone.
The Oregon Health Authority (OHA) updated its masking guidance on May 19, and it now states, "Businesses, employers and faith institutions now have the option to adjust their masking guidance to allow fully vaccinated individuals to no longer wear a mask in their establishments. Businesses, employers and faith institutions doing so must have a policy in place to check the vaccination status of all individuals before they enter their establishment. Businesses, employers and faith institutions who do not create such policies will maintain the same masking guidance listed below, regardless of an individual's vaccination status."
Governor Brown has indicated that Oregon businesses may continue to ask all employees and customers to wear masks as an alternative to asking for a vaccine passport.
On March 26, New York rolled out its "Excelsior Pass" system that would mandate people show that they have been vaccinated when trying to enter certain events and locations. Some fans attending two recent games in New York City helped test a new digital health pass developed by the state and IBM. Madison Square Garden and the Times Union Center, as well as the City University of New York, will be utilizing the pass for upcoming events.
Health officials in Orange County, California, announced a "Digital Passport" that "enables individuals to participate safely and with peace of mind in activities that involve interactions with other people, including travel, attractions, conferences/meetings, concerts, sports, school and more." However, when throngs of people protested this overreach, the board chairman announced, "we heard the noise, so Orange County will stop moving ahead in establishing any kind of digital record, any QR code, anything involving vaccination."
The vaccine passport is being promoted worldwide to limit a person's ability to leave home, work, shop, dine, travel, attend a public event, or even worship. Vaccine passports and tracking and tracing apps pre-date COVID and will not end with COVID. The implications for freedom are significant.
Dr. Naomi Wolf, an author and Rhodes Scholar, predicts that the vaccine passport will eventually track every aspect of people's lives and would violate the U.S. Constitution, the Americans With Disabilities Act, and HIPAA.
Dr. Wolf said, "I cannot say this forcefully enough: This is literally the end of human liberty in the West if this plan unfolds as planned... Vaccine passports sound like a fine thing if you don't know what those platforms can do. I'm CEO of a tech company, I understand what this platform does. It's not about the vaccine, it's not about the virus, it's about data. And once this rolls out you don't have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all."
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technology Review states, "This new social order will seem unthinkable to most people in so-called free countries. But any change can quickly become normal if people accept it. The new normal will be that we are used to the idea that in some cases being able to move around freely is dependent on us being able to show that we're healthy. There will be a greater acceptance, I think, of that kind of public health monitoring."
One of the teams working on vaccine passports is the Vaccination Credential Initiative. Mitre, a nonprofit company that runs federally funded research centers, is helping lead the initiative and aiming to release its free software standards soon in hopes that developers will use them to help build digital vaccine records that allow people to show they have been inoculated. The Vaccination Credential Initiative includes the Mayo Clinic, Microsoft and more than 225 other organizations, many of which have pledged to use the code when administering shots.
In her article, "The End of America?," Dr. Wolf writes "The new biofascism in the West, very much driven by Big Tech leaders, and soon to be exploited by our enemies geopolitically, is a war against free human beings and against the qualities that make us human. But this time we do not just face a war on freedom. This time we face a war on human beings, and on all that makes us human."
Dr. Wolf has created "Five Freedoms" on her website where people can download model legislation, including a vaccine passport/vaccine discrimination prohibition bill, to fight against such policies.
Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, "Digital health or vaccine passports along with tracking and tracing apps present a serious threat to freedom. Vaccine passports and tracking apps are about collecting data and control. COVID is being used to advance this dangerous threat to freedom. We must never accept vaccine passports or tracking apps as the new normal. If we do, it will be the end of freedom."
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SOURCE Liberty Counsel
CONTACT: Mat Staver, 407-875-1776, Liberty@LC.org
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