Towards an extension of the health pass?Close the Open the Plume panel Le Figaro App -icon - 512px V1 1 - Style/Logotypes/Le Figaro/Apps/Games

Cyrille Dalmont is a associate researcher at the Thomas More (Think-Tank) Institute)

Unsurprisingly, during his press conference of August 25, Olivier Véran announced that the health pass could be extended beyond November 15 "if the COVVID did not disappear from our lives" before the deadline fixed by lawrelating to the management of the health crisis of August 5 - adding that "we would need a new law, which would again be debated in parliament".

If they have been little commented on, these statements by the Minister of Health speaks volumes about the unprecedented decline of freedom, the founding value of Western anthropology and, therefore, of our political model that is democracy.Decline that goes far beyond the sole question of the health pass.To put it quickly, our societies gradually move from the principle of freedom to that of the prior authorization and the rule of law to the permanent state of emergency, without arouse many intellectual or media excitement.

To read also "the health pass could sign the end of our conception of freedom in the West"

Recall that the law relating to the management of the health crisis, containing the extension of the health pass, had been examined in Parliament in accelerated procedure, limiting to the congruent portion for the time of contradictory debate, under the constant pressure of the government.It is now the Minister of Health alone who allows himself to announce his extension, as if it were a formality.It is true that the very low participation of parliamentarians (40%) concerning a text which, for the first time in period of peace, brings an unprecedented attack on the exercise of several fundamental freedoms (freedom to come and go, freedom of theWork, freedom of commerce and industry, freedom of association, freedom of conscience), leaves little doubts about the outcome of the future vote ...

Admittedly, the health crisis has only made an already known fact: the alignment of the duration of the mandates of the deputies with that of the President of the Republic and the abolition of the cumulation of the mandates has finished transforming the parliament into a singleRecording room for government decisions.Admittedly, the alignment of the case law of the Constitutional Council, started from the start of the health crisis, on the classic jurisprudence of the Council of State relating to "exceptional circumstances", namely that "the existence of exceptional circumstances is in natureTo justify measures which would be, in normal circumstances, considered to be unconstitutional ", has come to confirm that in period of state of emergency, whatever its nature, the counterpowers provided for by our rule of law are now non-existent.

See also-COVID-19: "We are not fetishists from the health pass," says Gabriel Attal

But it is obvious that this situation is not only the consequence of the health crisis and this government.It follows from a slow process of nibbling public freedoms and fundamental rights since the 1990s and the constant strengthening of "security policies", always more restrictive of the fundamental freedoms of all (but rarely effective in view of the desired goal).The laws, ordinances or decrees against insecurity, terrorism, mass immigration, money laundering, tax fraud or more recently fake news and "hateful content" on the internet have been counted by dozens for thirty years.Public health and real -time tracing of healthy or sick populations through the health pass is ultimately only the latest.

If we have endeavored to alert many times against the unprecedented liberticide drift represented by the obligation to use a tracking and backtracking tool of the population to perform acts of everyday life in these columns,It is clear that decades of nihilism, deconstruction and perhaps comfort, have strongly questioned the "concern for freedom", to speak like Camus, in the country of the Declaration of Human and the Human andcitizen.

Indeed, many of our fellow citizens consider that, like the digital giants (Gafam and Batx) already trace them twenty-four hours a day, this does not change much if the State and the government do it to theirround.Worse, the information report of the prospective delegation of the Senate last June dares the following formula: "If a“ dictatorship ”saves lives while a“ democracy ”cries its dead, the right attitude is notto take refuge in positions in principle, but to question the concrete means both technical and legal, to reconcile effectiveness and respect for our values ”...

To these we must remember that, firstly, public freedoms and fundamental rights have been acquired, over the centuries and often in blood, by citizens (our ancestors) in the face of sovereign powers at the time (lordsFeudal, kings, emperors, states), but never in front of private companies, however powerful they are, which remain subject to the sovereignty of the states and do not have the sovereign force.And secondly, that never an authoritarian or dictatorial, modern drift has imposed itself spontaneously, but always gradually and always on the grounds of protecting freedom, nation or democracy.What will remain of our values tomorrow if we use the same methods as the dictatorships that we describe so easily?

Finally, for those that the juridico-political debates and the safeguarding of freedoms no longer fascinate, it is a fact of the most disturbing concerning the health pass, which the government regularly presents as the only alternative to a new confinement.According to the information report of the prospective delegation of the Senate quoted above, the Singaporean Application Tracetogether, the closest in terms of its programming of the Allanticvid application, which was deployed very quickly in 2020, with the settingIn place "about forty compulsory monitored by geolocation" did not "allow Singapore to escape confinement".Even more disturbing, the survey "Spooky Mayfly", "conducted by several major European media relating to 23 contact Tracing applications, recently confirmed the more than doubtful efficiency of these solutions [...]" in the fight against the pandemic.

Supporters of these technologies claim for their part that it is precisely because it is not strict sufficiently and that the data collected is not crossed with enough other databases that they are not effective.In other words, always limiting the freedoms of citizens, we may be able to gain security.There will always be a new emergency justifying this type of reasoning which always ends up making the exception the new standard.The sanitary pass thus has a good chance of becoming permanent.Indeed, the covid will probably never completely disappear from our lives like the influenza virus for example.Olivier Véran knows this perfectly.This allows him to peacefully affirm that the health pass will be extended "if the covid did not disappear from our lives".

This prerequisite, this first model thus created and tested can be used for countless new applications aimed at responding to emergencies of the moment: sanitary facilities first but also terrorists, chemical, migratory, nuclear, environmental, etc..The world which comes will therefore become that of the prior authorization and the digital categorization of the populations: healthy/not healthy, good citizen/bad citizen, respectful of standards/not respectful and ultimately supporting/opponent ... Behind that, already considerable, ofFreedom is an even greater issue that is looming: that of our common humanity ...

See also-"if the covid did not disappear from our lives", the sanitary pass could be extended beyond November 15, fears Olivier Véran

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