You MUST present your official ID (but only the one that's really easy to fake) As I leave the premises face-first, my ears ring with those oh-so-familiar parting words: "…and never darken our doors again!" In my mind's eye, I tuck myself into a ball and roll onto the pavement and allow the kinetic energy to bring me back up to standing. I turn around, trying to conjure a witty riposte but all I can think …
Like you M Dabbs, I have my "pass sanitaire" saved in multiple (accessible to me) places and a couple of paper copies to boot.
One thing, you missed buying some A6 vinyl sleeves for your paper copies...(Amazon.fr sells packs of 10 livraison à domicile)
Bon courage!
Toodle pip! etc.
Wait, isn't anybody going to check some form of corroborating identification?
There is a problem with that, as the French government has only belatedly noticed. Legally only the police and gendarmerie are allowed to ask for ID in connection with a health check, the library has no power to do so. Instead, the police will supposedly carry out random checks within such buildings (presumably when they have nothing else pressing to do, like catching jewel thieves racing away on scooters). By that stage it will be far too late to identify the (potentially contagious) person with the fake pass.
There's another issue with the French vaccination certificate which is causing problems for some British expats. In France a married woman is still legally referred to by her maiden name, even if she has chosen to take her husband's surname (which is considered just as a name of convenience). A married British woman's French ID will have both that maiden name and her married name, but her UK ID (passport, for example) may only have her married name. The 'pass sanitaire' has only the maiden name. Problems arise at airports, etc.
As my french prof explained you use the maiden name because people get married then divorced then remarried ad infinitum and if you keep changing the surname everyone will get confused and official papers lost -- a bureaucratic nightmare will follow therefor logically you always stick with the name you got at birth to keep the paper work simple and prevent getting your pass lost. Either that or you can't divorce and remarry.
One flaw with the French system. When we lived there our postal address was identical to that of several of our nearest rural neighbours (up to a mile apart). The only differentiating factor was the names of the residents. When the local health authority (CPAM) sent my wife a letter (addressed to her maiden name) it left the postman scratching his head and the mail returned to sender, as we subsequently discovered.
It probably helps with having a professional reputation established before a change of marital status. My daughter's publications were in her married name which she kept on divorce whereas my cousin's daughter has reverted to her maiden name.
At least my daughter hasn't, at least as yet, remarried. Years ago one archaeologist, having become established in her married name (to another archaeologist) kept using it on remarriage. A journalist for the Irish Times who didn't see eye-to-eye with her on some matters referred to her in print on at least one occasion as "Mrs $CurrentMarriedName writing as $FormerMarriedName".
As my french prof explained you use the maiden name because people get married then divorced then remarried ad infinitum and if you keep changing the surname everyone will get confused and official papers lost
Two decades ago I was working at a company whose user environment was a mix of VMS and Windows, with VMS' Pathworks supplying the network shares. And because of this the user authentication had to match across those platforms; there was a tool that tried to keep passwords in sync but it tended to work one way only (change pw on VMS and Windows should follow) if it worked at all. For creating user accounts they had some scripting that worked well enough, but changing a username was a nightmare as it tended to break the password sync even more. Zapping the name and creating a fresh one appeared a fair bit simpler, except that now you had to fix file ownerships and group authorizations and whatnot, taking at least several hours of chasing down every last file and database access. So after the third or fourth marriage/divorce in as many weeks we stipulated that a username was just some way of authenticating you to the systems, and NOT a reflection of your real-world name. After that there were just two cases in two years where we did change the username, where the user had deep and very valid reasons to not have to use their old username any more.
A throwback to the days when married women were considered to be the chattels of their husbands.
I know several women (my wife included) who didn't change their name when getting married, and one man who took his wife's surname (because he preferred it, presumably).
My sister, on the other hand, couldn't wait to get rid of her maiden name which always resulted in the "how do you spell that?" question, and usually a repeat, and even then usually additional letters randomly inserted into the thing. Her husband has a common and boringly-easy surname which speeds things up no end!
As did mine.
It doesn't fit on any paperwork, which leads to no end of trouble. Some places omit all the spaces, some omit the last word, some the first word and others just cut off after X characters. Or some combination of these.
This causes a problem when banks and airlines insist she types in exactly what they have in their records, as she has no way of knowing which way they decided to mangle her name today.
My wife ran into that in Denmark. The system (designed late 60es) only has 30 characters for names. You get the first, the last, and as many of the middle names as space allows.
Not a real problem; your true identity is your number of the format DDMMYY-NNNN which is used just about everywhere. Any data fetichist’s dream
I always had problems to wrap my head around the idea of changing the woman's last name on marriage. It seems ripe to cause all sorts of misunderstandings.
Of course in my corner of the world we go along happily using two surnames (first surname from the father followed by first surname from the mother or vice versa) as well as at least two, but sometimes more, given names... That never causes any confusions on where the first names end and the last start, or what, if anything, is a middle name, or what to put into an international form that has less that half the needed space... no sire!
My wife and I have different surnames. Our daughters have surnames three and four, their husbands five and six. The grandkids all share the surnames of their respective mothers.
All fine with me. Frankly I've always thought the name-changing stuff is a bunch of unnecessary effort, as well as having unpleasant historical associations. But for those who want to (such as my married sister, and my married brother's wife), that's fine too; it's their name and they should do what they want.
That said, my favorite part of the weekly legal-notices section of the local paper1 is the name-change notices. Sometimes it's pretty obvious what motivates them; sometimes, in the ... free-thinking ... culture of the Mountain Fastness's environment, they're hilariously bizarre. Particularly since in the US you can go by whatever name you want without legally changing it, so going through the courts is something of a statement.
1Yes, we have a local newspaper. Yes, we read it. Yes, that makes us old.
There is a problem with that, as the French government has only belatedly noticed. Legally only the police and gendarmerie are allowed to ask for ID in connection with a health check, the library has no power to do so.
Presumably they have the power to ask for their library card or if you don't have one only let you get as far as reception to get a library card, where the name can be checked with other ID?
"Wait, isn't anybody going to check some form of corroborating identification? She's seen my code, my name, my birthdate, and my inside leg measurement. Won't she check any of these data for authenticity? I hold out my driving licence but no one wants to see it. A scannable QR code is all they wanted. I could have shown them anybody's vaccination QR code and they would have accepted it."
That's because, in France, average Joe (librarian, sex shop owner, me, your neighbour) doesn't have any authority to ask for your ID card or passport, aka, the only way to prove who you really are. If they do, you're totally entitled to return a middle finger !
Yes, it's a huge and highly exploited loophole, but see, the Macron Ivory Tower doesn't really bother with details, and peons just tick the mark by asking you the QR code only, to satisfy the idiot and still stay in the legality. Of course they know it may very well be someone else's but they tick the mark in order to not be in trouble.
I'll probably be doing the same on the local festival, some weeks away.
Remember the MPs downgraded the fine for any shop required to ask passe sanitaire before letting you in, from a whopping 45 kE, I seem to remember, down to 1500 E, for failing to do so !
Clearly, Soviet Macron creates a Soviet situation where people are just ticking the mark, outside of any sense, in order to not risk thousands in fine.
Anon and posted from a VPN, cos ... Yvan the Soviet is watching me :)
That's because, in France, average Joe (librarian, sex shop owner, me, your neighbour) doesn't have any authority to ask for your ID card or passport
Here on the other side of the Atlantic (and of the equator line), even shopkeepers are allowed to ask for a photo ID. Some do, some don't, it depends on the type of transaction. We sort of got used to it.
Even so, identity fraud is rampant. To get a prepaid SIM you just need to inform your national registry number, which is not checked against any document. As a result, our meek citizens have to check from time to time how many SIMs are registered in their names.
"Well, it's actually not true, on some specific occasions shops not only can, but are actually required by law to ask for a photo ID. Selling tobacco and liquor to younger people is one of this cases, paying by cheque is another. There are many others."
True that, for alcohol and tobacco, also licensed weapons. I have yet to see it happening in real life but you definitely have a point.
For the rest, my OP post still stands.
This post has been deleted by its author
the Macron Ivory Tower
That has nothing to do with Macron, but with our Bureaucracy, which has a long tradition of making this kind of stupid things. Re-read Courteline, more than one century later it's still fitting perfectly.
I think a lot of people confuse fascism with "totalitarianism" or "authoritarianism" when they go name calling in this manner, but then if they used one of those terms instead as they march down the street in protest, they might realise that it was time to look hard at themselves in the mirror.
It's possible to be an authoritarian on both side of the political camps.
Proving you aren't dead might be hard - one woman’s battle to prove she isn’t dead
It does have all the symptoms what we fear of being caught in a bureaucracy nightmare - there was a Romanian in similar position
I live in the boonies in Spain so the only people who don't ask to see my ID are the cops and pist office staff as they know me, country cops always know who you are here.
Otherwise it is normal to have to show your ID to shop staff etc if they ask for it.
Re the videos, I used to do quite a lot of security at gigs and clubs. If I had been at the slipknot gig I would have thrown the alleged band out, at least there was redemption finishing with ZZTop.
At least in France, people are used to petty officiousness as a way of life, and can have the fun of endlessly devising ways of getting round it. Here in the UK we have the spectacle of a governing party fighting with themselves like cats in a bag over whether or not to introduce such urgent measures a whole two months from now, which will inevitably result in another half baked compromise that is no use whatsoever and still an annoying inconvenience.
I have my vaccine status letter stored safely in a drawer, so that when something is eventually decided I might still have a chance of going out to buy a loaf of bread amidst all the chaos that will result.
You can get a letter (on real paper) from the NHS by dialing 119. This does not expire unlike the electronic ones. I did that and laminated it. It comes on A4 paper, something smaller would be nicer.
Oh so funny to read these comments. France has an ID system but has very strict rules on who can ask for those details (not librarians clearly).
However, here in the UK I have to show ID at least twice a week to pick up deliveries or to get access to a building. However, there is no ID system (I know the argument about passports and drivers licenses, but a passport is for travelling which I don't take it with me to walk around town and a drivers license is for driving around on a motorised vehicle which is something I don't do)
And the odd one for deliveries (at least with the Post Office if you miss them and have to go pick it up from their depot) is that they accept a credit/debit card as a form of ID. Sure it has a name on it, but nothing else that could tie it to a person.
Many times I've ended up picking up a parcel for my better half, suitably armed with her card and they've happily accepted it as ID. Always found that odd given the card name begins "Mrs", and I'm a bearded male of the species...
I witnessed (what I, at least, thought was) an interesting debate at my local branch of La Poste, between a customer and the clerk behind the counter regarding what counts as a legitimate form of ID accepted by general officialdom.
The customer had tried to collect a parcel by showing the 'sorry you were out' slip and his Carte Vitale (the heath service registration card). The woman behind the desk would not accept the latter as proof of ID. The customer was a typical loopy old git and started shouting and ranting so that a manager had to come out from the back office to help.
The manager, without a beat, said that the accepted form of official ID would have to comprise all of the following...
- be issued by a governmental body
- show a photo of the person
- show the person's name
- show the person's date of birth
...and that's all.
The angry old man left with his parcel: the Carte Vitale shows all of the above.
My UK driving license pre-dates the photocard ones. Occasionally, I have to explain to, usually younger people, that yes, it IS a valid driving licence and it's their problem if they've never seen one before. If part of their job involves checking ID then it's their responsibility to recognise the list of valid forms of ID.
France may not allow this either, but my idea, unless someone already posted it below, is to carry a QR code which is an "anonymous" link online to my vaccine status, my coronavirus test results - and my photograph.
The health information should be limited to what the health service has been told to reveal about me, e.g. vaccinated in the last 12 months or tested negative this week, and the photograph will not reveal anything that I don't reveal anyway by being present in person. Unless at weekends I wear a dress and call myself Roberta, and I assume that enough people do that for it to be sorted out already, I just need two photo cards for different occasions. A card with my photo on it still only reveals usually that a person who looks like the photograph owns it, and when Roberta comes out, she knows to leave Robert's photo card at home.
I immediately laminated the little card they gave me saying what I had been given and when. In fact, I did the whole department and anyone else who came into IT while I was doing them.
My basic reason was that I wanted proof that I had had them but was concerned that some eejit would stop them! My employer, the NHS, knows that I've had them (booked less than 90 seconds after I heard I was entitled) but I do voluntary work and a card shows there is less likely to be a Covid danger from me to the vulnerable
Yes, I can see a likeness to Norman Wisdom. Sorry about that. To continue the theme, he appeared in What's Good for the Goose with the Pretty Things, whose founder member, Phil May, died last year.
and saw him carry a fridge freezer up three flights of stairs under one arm. Apparently being kicked in the head by a pit pony gave him superpowers.
I took a phone call from the CIA.
The guy introduced himself as so and so from the CIA, and I replied, "Oh fuck off", and hung up. I assumed it was the older techs pals in Tuscon playing a prank. To be fair, that was totally the sort of crap they did.
So he phones back and again says he's from the CIA, and they are banning my board being exported to Hungary because the relay technology is too advanced.
"Oh fuck off prick. If you read the Electronic Times you'd know Hungary just built their own supercomputer and would hardly be interested in my relays."
I was a wee bit sensitive about my relays being of the backside of the board. Form factor error in CAD.
He said maybe he should phone my manager instead, and I agreed - just stop wasting my time.
Turns out it was the CIA.
The thing about my CIA guy was he obviously was used to my 'fuck off' responses. They must get that every day in their job.
Politician? Nah, I'm an anarchist and await the unwilling dictatorship. No crown for me, ta.
Dalkeith, if you were wondering where the pit pony was.
As I tend to ignore and not watch soaps there are lots of well known to other people I have no idea who they are. They tend to clog up celebrity quiz shows, and my usual point is "Aren't they supposed to be well known?"
Same applies to most scripted reality shows.
Prefer decent Sci Fi and comedies, sometimes both, or decent car shows.
Compare this with the NHS system for recording a negative lateral flow test which doesn't actually require that the test was negative nor, indeed, taken. All that's required is the serial number of a test strip.
As regards personal ID I read in another place that the much vaunted Estonian electronic ID system has been reamed out to the extend of about quarter of a million ID photos.
Some little shops where you buy bagels etc. have those frequent flyer cards where your 13th dozen is free, with a shapely hole punched out of a small card for each dozen you actually pay for.
You'd think they'd use punches that can't be bought at your local craft store.
Not that I'd stoop to such chicanery myself, of course.
"I'm rubbish at pretending to be someone else, code or no code."
Yes, it kills some people... but then so does mumps, normal flu and I daresay a bunch of other diseases.
This is just a whole business centred around controlling the plebs, and its being allowed to work.
Democracy? I think in honesty north Korea is both more honest and more democratic
Certainly once the majority of people have been vaccinated, then these passes should no longer be necessary. If the vaccine works, then the virus will go away, if the vaccine doesn’t work, then there’s no need to keep the passes because what is the point of keeping track of a failed vaccine. Governments however, which ever way the wind blows on the effectiveness of the vaccine, will not want to let go of the control and tracking of citizens that they have gained, so either in will come spec creep, mandating that passes are useful for tracking other things, such as ID, political affiliation, sexual preference. Either that or there will always be “that new variant” that will never be cured, just always be less effective to the recipients of the previous vaccine.
"If the vaccine works, then the virus will go away"
True for things like small pox, measles, and the like, because they are fairly stable, but it looks like not for Covid because it mutates too much, just like flu.
Coming this autumn, your annual combined flu and covid 'booster'
The emergence of variants is a function of the prevalence of the virus in the population.
Variants are actually competing against each other and the prize is continued existence - we are just the playing field.
unless we control the virus running rampant, newer, more competitive variants will continue to emerge (-they will anyway, but like all things Covid, the best we can do is slow the rate) , especially in poorer and developing countries .
This reminds me of the old USA attitude to world war III,..something to fight in someone else's country, rather than your own. It does require getting control at home first., any government that fails to look after its own citizens isnt doing its job and needs to be replaced.
Mumps is 'ing deadly. So is measles.
They used to kill thousands of kids every year before there were effective vaccines, and these days they occasionally kill antivaxer's kids.
Covid is around 10 times deadlier than measles but far less transmissible, and of course measles tends to kill kids while covid tends to kill the elderly while maiming the young.
Go read some actual research papers, not the bollocks spouted by the dirty Facebook dozen.
Yes, some departments are using it as an excuse - but mostly for blatant and massive corruption.
If this actually bothers you, donate to The Good Law Project or your local equivalent.
If you can rent/buy a QR code online then I assume there are multiple instances in play at any one time.
Interesting if someone checked scanned locations and time to show the same person regularly travelled hundreds of miles in as many seconds
Although I gain the impression that the scan may not be recorded.
Just "scanner goes Yes".
A very long time ago, I arrived at Dover (from France) in a red Jaguar with white vinyl roof*, together with my very pretty girlfriend and her two friends. Just for a laugh, I was wearing a chauffeur's hat.
The customs and immigration waved us to one side, and were clearly planning to search us. My girlfriend said, loudly, and in my general direction "I don't think they know who we are!" One officer whispered to another, and the third one waved us on.
As we left, one of the friends, leaned forward from the back seat, said "I don't think we know who we are!"
* That was the fashion in those days.
I've been told I look like Tom Petty.
I was working on someone's pc in a factory where some of the staff had close connections with the music biz. Out of the corner of my eye, one of the staff walked past me, looking at me... then she walked back and forth a few times before her curiosity got the better of her.
"Scuse me, but you look SO much like..."
"Tom Petty?"
"Yes".
"Wish I could play the guitar like him, wouldn't be sitting here setting up pc's if I were".
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
