The new approach to vaccine passports, which are controversial and unpopular, is to call them by a different name. A rose by any other name might not smell as sweet and a vaccine passport by any other name would be less totalitarian.

California is refusing to call them vaccine passports. And Google has creatively decided to call them COVID cards. Their marketing department must have burned the midnight oil coming up with that one. But the vaccine passports, sorry COVID cards, are coming to Android.

Google will soon let Android users carry a COVID vaccine card on their phones. It has updated Android’s built-in passes system to enable a “simple and secure” way to store digital vaccine and test cards on Android devices.

The feature will initially roll out in the US, followed by other countries.

Let…

 Google says the card will be accessible even when users are offline or in areas with low internet connectivity.

No doubt.

Google promises it won’t retain a copy of the information and will not share it with third-party services for ad-targeting purposes. However, the company will know how you use your COVID card, such as the number of times you access it and on which days.

Of course it will. And despite what it claims, it will no doubt retain the information in perpetuity. That’s how Big Data does things.

But admire for a moment, the media’s willing compliance to quickly adopt new terminology in order to erase the old on command. The article, like every article on the subject, doesn’t use the term ‘vaccine passport’ even though that had formerly been the most common term.

The order has gone out to call it a ‘COVID card’ and everyone complies.