Why does a COVID travel pass app require anything other than medical information?

Leon Paul reports:

BREAKING: NHS app used for Covid domestic and travel passes now collects data on mental health, social circumstances, political opinions, lifestyle, alleged criminal convictions and will be used as identity document for “right to work” and “right to rent”

We have independently confirmed at this time that the NHS Web site does state what you just saw.

He adds further:

I cannot confirm this data or whether the NHS app will become a domestic digital ID, I just find this … interesting

Leon helps us raise an important question

What is the point of collecting data on your political opinions, criminal convictions, sex orientation or religious beliefs?  What does any of these personal information categories have to do with health?

Nothing, of course.  The NHS don't need this information at all.

But the data is, in fact, collected.  Which means the data is available, at least to some individuals (that you may never know) — perhaps to the NHS, perhaps to other government agencies... who knows.

It's a safe assumption that, at least in this case, data collected is data used.  Nobody goes the extra mile, in process and work, or in software development, to collect extra data — if they do not intend to use it.  Collecting this extra data costs more money, takes more time, and requires a higher ongoing maintenance / operational burden.

If the data is collected — and it is — but they don't tell you why they need the data — and they don't, at least not for their stated goals — then you have to do the obvious risk management thing of inferring what the data could be used for.

Remember when the conspiracy theorists said that the health passports were not just going to be "for health"?

Remember when the conspiracy theorists said that governments were implementing total surveillance under a scheme of social credit scoring?

Well, take a wild guess at which new development makes that possible.  Which database do you think will be consulted, in order to deny you food, lodging, work, and anything else you need that might be useful to extract more humiliation and more subservience from you?

Now you know.

"But...but... but... this could never happen in the U.K.!"

Oh, really?  You know what also couldn't happen that did?  Two years' worth of lockdowns, arrests and fines against people who committed no wrong.  So that happened.  Why can't this happen?  They already have the data to do it.

We don't get tired of repeating it: The purpose of a thing is what it does.  If you were told "so-and-so is for purpose Y", and the obvious facts clearly indicate it isn't solely for purpose Y, you were lied to.  The facts don't fit the innocuous-sounding pretext, because the innocuous-sounding pretext was a lie.

At some point we're all going to get tired of watching the conspiracy theorists get it right. over and over again.