Free Republic

New York state has fixed an issue with the Excelsior Pass Wallet that allows users to acquire and store COVID-19 vaccine credentials. The issue -- discovered by researchers at the NCC Group -- allows someone "to create and store fake vaccine credentials in their NYS Excelsior Pass Wallet that might allow them to gain access to physical spaces (such as businesses and event venues)... The researchers found that the application did not validate vaccine credentials added to it, allowing forged credentials to be stored by users. New York State was notified of the issue on April 30 but spent months...

What’s behind the controversial governor’s connection to the tech giant? Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism. Are you a New Yorker who wants to live a normal life? Move to Florida. And if you can’t do that, get an Excelsior Pass. ‘Excelsior’ means ‘higher’ in Latin and is New York’s motto. It’s probably not the best motto for a broken state tiptoeing toward bankruptcy. And it’s an even worse name for a vaccine passport that allows businesses to discriminate. A day after...

Liberty advocates, rejoice! The idiocracy is going to save us from another form of COVID tyranny. Thanks to a combination of bungling authoritarians and decaying legacy corporations, these entities are simply too incompetent to pull off a functioning vaccine passport program.New York’s rollout of its vaccine passport already has the markings of a five alarm dumpster fire. The New York State “Excelsior Pass” vaccine passport system, which was created by IBM, has so many issues that I wouldn’t be surprised if the program was scrapped altogether before the end of the calendar year. It has massive security flaws, a shrinking...

New York state lawmakers on Thursday were negotiating a $2.1 billion fund that would give unemployment benefits to illegal immigrants and former inmates — possibly providing some recipients with around $28,000. Legislators and Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s office were hashing out details of the “Excluded Worker Fund,” which would be part of the now-overdue 2021-22 state budget, sources told The Post. The proposal, introduced in the Senate and Assembly two weeks ago, aims to help residents who are otherwise ineligible for federal aid, such as people living in the country illegally or those recently sprung from jail. Advocates — who are...

The final spending package includes $2.1 billion in aid for undocumented immigrants hit hard by the pandemic... Left-leaning lawmakers and activists had been pushing for $3.5 billion to establish a relief fund for undocumented immigrants, who were ineligible for other forms of state or federal aid. Pushback from Republicans and moderate suburban Democrats meant that the final budget allocation was reduced to $2.1 billion. Applicants will have to verify their identity, residency and work history to be eligible for one of the two tiers in the program, which will be administered by the Department of Labor. The higher tier of...

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration started tracking COVID-19 related nursing home resident deaths as early as last April, but the complete data was left out of a health department report three months later, it was revealed Wednesday. The state Health Department sent a memo to nursing homes and adult care facilities on April 18, 2020, directing them to report the number of residents who died from COVID-19 whether they died in the facility or not, the New York Post reports. But 11 weeks later, the Health Department released a report on July 6 that excluded residents who did not...

New York is the first state to launch a “vaccine passport” program, allowing New Yorkers to pull up a code on their phones to prove they have received a coronavirus vaccine or have tested negative. New York is the first state to formally launch a “vaccine passport” program, allowing New Yorkers to pull up a code on their phones to prove they have received a vaccine for the Chinese coronavirus or have tested negative. The vaccine passport, called the Excelsior Pass, is what USA Today describes as a “first-in-the-nation certification,” which will be used at large-scale events and entertainment venues....

The nation’s very first “vaccine passport” is coming to the Big Apple. The program, dubbed the “Excelsior Pass,” is an app that will allow New Yorkers to prove their vaccination status, or recent history of a negative COVID-19 test, in order to gain entry to events and businesses, Governor Cuomo announced in a news release Friday. “Similar to a mobile airline boarding pass, individuals will be able to either print out their pass or store it on their smartphones using the Excelsior Pass Wallet app,” the news release explains. “Each Pass will have a secure QR code, which participating businesses...