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Introducing immunity or vaccine passports is one non-pharmaceutical intervention that governments are considering to exempt immune, vaccinated or otherwise risk-free individuals from lockdowns and other public health restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. The primary objective of these documents would be to begin reopening societies, restarting economies and returning to a pre-pandemic normalcy. This article aims to present the start of a conceptual documentary analysis of (proposed and existing) COVID-19 immunity passports in order to more fully center their documentary status within research, considerations and conversations about their potential roles, impacts and implications.

Inspired by Paula A. Treichler's argument for the importance of theoretical thought for untangling the socio-cultural phenomena of epidemics, and drawing upon interdisciplinary theories of documentation, identity and public health, combined with recent news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, this article provides a contemporary overview and conceptual analysis of emerging documentary regimes of COVID-19 immunity verification involving immunity or vaccine passports.

Three major interconnected objectives could be fulfilled by immunity passports. First, they would establish and materialize an official identity of COVID-19 immune for people possessing the formal document. Second, they would serve as material evidence establishing and verifying individuals' immunity, vaccination or risk-free status from the coronavirus that would, in term, determine and regulate their movements and other privileges. Third, they would create tangible links between individuals and governments' official or recognized identity category of COVID-19 immune. Immunity passports would, therefore, help enable and enforce governmental authority and power by situating individuals within documentary regimes of COVID-19 immunity verification.

In the expanding interdisciplinary literature on COVID-19 immunity passports, sometimes also called certificates, licenses, or passes, there appears to be only minimal reference to their documentary instantiations, whether physical, digital, and/or hybrid documents. As yet, there is not any specific documentary approach to or analysis of immunity passports as kinds of documentation. A documentary approach helps to illuminate and emphasize the materiality of and ontological considerations concerning the coronavirus pandemic and its associated kinds of immunity or vaccination.

By beginning an exploration of what makes immunity passports thinkable as a public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, this article illuminates these health and identity documents' material implications for, and effects on, individuals and societies. This article, therefore, helps shed light on what immunity passports reveal about the complicated and contested intersections of identity, documentation, public health and socio-political control and discipline.

This article contributes the start of a documentary analysis of (proposed and existing) COVID-19 immunity passports in order to more fully center their documentary status within research and conversations about them.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the applications of blockchain in vaccine passport solution. The world is facing an unprecedented situation because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many countries have witnessed sporadic lockdown and travel restrictions and it has marred trade and tourism. As the mass vaccination has started the life is slowly and steadily returning to true normal. Various countries are issuing vaccination passports to manage the immunization information and validate it. To realize vaccine-passport’s true potential, security and privacy concerns should be being taken care of. There is a need for studies to evaluate the emerging technology for the vaccine passport.

This study uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods to achieve its objective. This study uses a systematic literature review to analyze the potential of blockchain for vaccine passports. The case study of three different types of organizations implementing blockchain for vaccine passports was analyzed and results were presented. Last but not least, focus group discussion and search of secondary literature was to done to identify scientific, ethical and legal challenges associated with the use of vaccine passports. The method used for calculating the importance score of these challenges was analytical hierarchy process.

This study concludes that blockchain-based solutions are very suitable for vaccine passports and addresses the concern related to interoperability, privacy and security. The case study approach was used to elaborate the use of blockchain in three different options available for the vaccine. Last but not least, this study identifies the challenges faced by vaccine passport programs and suggests measures to overcome them. This study concludes that the ethical challenges associated with vaccine passports are more important and should be preferentially treated.

This study is timely and will be he lpful for policymakers in designing the vaccine passport programs. It gives valuable insight to decision-makers evaluating technologies for the development of vaccine passport programs. This study identifies nine challenges to be tackled to making a vaccine passport program successful.

To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is not able to find out a review on the use of blockchain technology for vaccine passports, and this study attempts to fill this gap. This study further discusses the cases of organizations that have implemented blockchain technology for vaccine passport programs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the feasibility and desirability of using the Microsoft Passport service for client authentication and authorization. It aims to present the business benefits of using Microsoft Passport, an overview (logical) description of the work involved in adopting Microsoft Passport into a business site, and a functional description of how Microsoft Passport works in conceptual terms.

An analysis of the level of business adoption of passport is then presented.

The paper concludes that business adoption of Microsoft Passport appears to be losing ground due to lack of trust, control, and privacy; and the proliferation of other identity management paradigms. This issue report is prepared from the perspective of a business analyst and is pitched in terminology suitable for a business audience.

This work provides organisations investigating the feasibility/desirability of using the Microsoft Passport, a fundamental understanding of passport, how passport works in conceptual terms, and the current business adoption status for passport services.

Offers a significant analysis of the feasibility and desirability of using the Microsoft Passport service for client authentication and authorization and its current business adoption.

As far as governments are concerned, it is the nationality of a person, usually reflected in a passport, that shows whether the government has a duty to protect that individual and whether the person owes obligations to the state. Hong Kong is unusual in that for many people there, passports are primarily seen as documents that offer safety and security. It is not unusual for people to possess two or more passports. The purpose of this paper is to examine attitudes toward passports on the part of Hong Kong people, formed by their unique experience.

This paper analyzes key documents, such as China’s Nationality Law and a little known document, “Explanations of Some Questions by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Concerning the Implementation of the Nationality Law of the People’s Republic of China in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.” The paper also looks at the Loh case of August 2016, involving a Canadian man who wanted a Hong Kong passport for his 11-year-old Canadian-born son, and the Patrick Tse case, where Hong Kong tried to strip a teenager who possessed German nationality of his Hong Kong passport.

The convenience of travel to China with a Home Return Permit seems to outweigh any sense of loyalty to an adopted country in the west, or the realization that the use of a document identifying its holder as a Chinese national means that she/he would not have any consular protection. It is also ironical that the Hong Kong Government should maintain the difference between nationality and ethnicity at a time when the Chinese Government is doing the very opposite, playing down the status of nationality while magnifying the importance of so-called “Chinese blood.”

This paper examines a topic that has not been widely studied but is likely to become more important in the years to come as China’s impact on the rest of the world increases. The nationality status of ethnic Chinese will increasingly become an issue as the flow of travel between China and other countries rises and Chinese immigrants continue to take up foreign nationality. While this issue is of special importance to Hong Kong, its impact will extend to countries around the world, in fact, to wherever Chinese persons are to be found.

The purpose of this paper is to show that most, if not all RFID/biometric passports have clear technical and social problems in their intended use and that there are clear problems with the databases into which biometric data are being collected, due to use of this data for other (publicly), non‐intended uses.

The approach of this paper is both a meta‐study of the flaws in the technological specifications as well as the social implementation of RFID/biometric passports. Finland is used as a case, but the results extend beyond Finland in most, if not all the topics presented – not necessarily all results to all implementations, but all to some others.

The current implementations of RFID/biometric passports are lacking in both technical and social implementations and pose clear risks to their use, both due to lax implementation of the technology itself but specifically due to the social changes brought about. These problems cause both erosion of privacy and trust.

Further research into other potential social implications on a national level is required. The authors fear that the cases presented do not necessarily reflect all the potential problems, but just the most evident ones.

The problems with the technological implications can be averted by using the best technological solutions, and thus the best technological solutions should be used instead of the ones proven to be lacking.

The social implications should at least be brought forth for public discourse and acknowledged, which currently does not seem to happen.

The paper contributes to the understanding of problems with current RFID/biometric passport implementations as well as inherent social problems that are hard, if not impossible to avoid. The problems belong under the category of critical eGovernment applications, and similar issues are visible in other eGovernment applications.

Passport photographs are routinely incorporated onto official travel documentation to ascertain an individual’s identity. In Australia, passport photographs may be provided by a range of retail suppliers and photographed to a set of standards developed by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Whether these standards can provide consistency between craniofacial representation and other parameters throughout individual subjects is unknown. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

This study tests the consistency of passport images with regard to parameters that are likely to affect suitability for use as passport documents. These parameters include, space and dimensionality, craniofacial representation, image sharpness, exposure and colour rendition.

The examination found there was a significant degree of variation among the test results despite being completed using the same instructional guidelines designed to produce uniformity.

The paper identifies a significant degree of variation among test results and suggests further review.

This paper aims to examine the rationale for the establishment of a depositary passport as the next logical step in building an internal market for investment funds in the European Union (EU). It makes the point that the de facto prohibition of depositary passporting poses risks to financial stability and has an adverse impact on investor protection in EU member states, which do not have a fully developed funds industry.

This paper analyses both the arguments in favour and against the adoption of a depositary passport. Moreover, it examines this proposal in the context of different approaches to fostering the internal market such as mutual recognition, harmonisation of regulation, reflexive governance of financial supervision and centralised supervision.

Based on the review of the current EU legal framework, this paper, subsequently, puts forward possible solutions for the establishment of an internal market for depositary business, which solutions have been discussed with various experts in the field to assess their feasibility in practice.

The paper contributes to the debate on the EU internal market in the field of asset management, which is topical in view of the upcoming review of the EU’s Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive.

To explain two papers published by the European Securities and Marketing Authority (ESMA) covering the application of the mar-keting “passport” under the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive (AIFMD).

Explains ESMA’s first paper, containing an advice to the European Parliament, Council and Commission (collectively the Trilogue) on the potential application of the AIFMD passport to non-EU Alternative Investment Fund Managers (AIFMs) and Alternative in-vestment Funds (AIFs), and a second paper, containing ESMA’s opinion on the current functioning of the AIFMD (currently used by EU AIFMs marketing EU AIFs in the EU) and National Private Placement Regimes (NPPRs, used for marketing by non-EU AIFMs and non-EU AIFs).

The ESMA papers were disappointing because they gave far less guidance and encouragement than anticipated that AIFs located in major jurisdictions such as the US and the Cayman Islands will be any easier to market to EU professional investors in the near future.

AIFMs (both inside and outside the EU) who are already using, or intending to use, the NPPRs should take some comfort that it seems highly unlikely that these regimes will be removed in the near future.

Practical guidance from experienced financial services lawyers.

This paper aims to provide a business plan for libraries to offer profitable passport services to patrons.

Gives an overview of demographic, financial, and management profiles of California libraries that offer passport services. Presents a plan for introducing passport service in two California libraries.

Current political and demographic environments for the two libraries make the introduction of passport services a potentially lucrative opportunity.

Little to no correlation was found between patron demographics of libraries currently offering passport services and the amount of revenue the services produce.

Passport services may provide libraries a simple but effective way to supplement their budgets.

Suggests an innovative way for libraries to increase relevance to patrons through services as well as create a stable funding source.