Beautiful Virgin Islands

Wednesday, Oct 08, 2025

Are Covid passports a threat to liberty? It depends on how you define freedom

Are Covid passports a threat to liberty? It depends on how you define freedom

The pandemic is once again causing governments to pit incompatible ideas of freedom against each other
Now that the UK’s vaccination programme is beginning to offer an escape route out of lockdown restrictions, despite some hitches, attention is focusing on so-called domestic vaccine passports. Important details remain uncertain but the idea has already been criticised as potentially “divisive and discriminatory”, as well as going against “British instinct” – presumably because Covid passports are reminiscent of compulsory ID cards, the absence of which many regard as a hallmark of British liberty. The desire for freedom is, of course, pretty universal – but there are many, and incompatible, ideas of freedom.

The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished two from more than 200 senses of the word he claimed had been recorded by historians of ideas: “negative liberty”, or freedom from interference; and “positive liberty”, or freedom understood as self-mastery and self-determination. The former ensures that others don’t hinder your choices, while the latter aims to create conditions that give you options and make your choices truly yours and genuinely free.

Although they may seem like two sides of a coin, Berlin was suspicious of the idea of positive liberty, especially as a social or political aim. He argued that, historically, it had tended to spawn oppressive institutions and regimes: through twisted reasoning, these regimes ended up justifying not merely the suppression of most negative liberties but even arbitrary incarceration, killings and torture as lesser evils needed to bring about true individual or collective liberation.

Berlin was right about the dangers of distorted ideas of positive liberty. But it would be a mistake to conclude, as some libertarians do, that we could or should think about political freedom without it. The value of negative liberty, of freedom from interference is, at least partly, that it allows me to choose for myself the projects, relationships and pursuits that will shape my life. But if lack of access to education, healthcare and so on means that I don’t really have any worthwhile alternatives to pursue, negative liberty alone surely isn’t worth having.

Negative liberty is freedom from the kinds of interference that – by whatever means – prevent or compel action. Having it doesn’t mean that you are free to do whatever you want, however unimpeachable. Your lack of talent may prevent you from becoming a great singer. But when others coerce you to do things or not to do things, then they curtail your negative liberty. And that is precisely what governments everywhere, and in many cases to an extraordinary degree, have done during the current pandemic.

Often using emergency legislation, they have imposed curfews and lockdowns of varying stringency that interfere with freedom of movement and of association in every aspect of life: from family and friendship to work and religious practices. They have impeded or restricted access to trade and commerce, as well as entertainment, culture and sports. They have mandated the use of face coverings.

Lockdown and related measures haven’t taken away our ability to do all the things that constitute ordinary life but have deprived us of the opportunities to do them, whether by the threat of sanctions or by active prevention. Some people have questioned whether this massive curtailment of negative liberty is justified.

More than 160 years ago John Stuart Mill argued that in a “civilised community”, the only justification for government coercion is the prevention of harm to others. In the UK, and many other countries, long before Covid, coercive state measures, from taxes to car seatbelts, were pervasive and accepted on grounds that go beyond Mill’s justification, or at least involve a very broad interpretation of his harm principle.

The extensions include harm to oneself, justified possibly on the grounds that where there is a welfare state, certain harms to yourself indirectly harm others – and the idea that harm can be caused by omission as well as by commission. And freedom from interference is often sacrificed for the sake of other values, such as equality, prosperity, fairness and security – which may in turn enhance positive liberty.

But coercive lockdown and related Covid measures can be justified on Mill’s terms – the prevention of harm to others – without much stretching. Of course, in some countries, the situation has been opportunistically exploited to concentrate unchecked power in the government, and for the long term. But in most, including the UK, measures are confined to reducing the spread of the virus, thus preventing many more deaths and acute cases, and the ensuing collapse of health services.

Some have questioned whether the restrictions have been proportionate, given the demographic of actual and potential deaths, the long-term costs to the economy, which will affect the young disproportionately, and to the physical and mental health of the whole population – to say nothing of future burdens building up for health services. Those are important considerations but it matters that the Covid threat is, by the consensus of experts, grave, credible and imminent.

No doubt there have been mistakes, inconsistencies and exaggerations in the details in different places, some due to unavoidable ignorance or uncertainty, others to ineptitude, political expedience and opportunism. The proper assessment of these will take time, and the assembly and analysis of much complex information.

It is currently far from clear how Covid domestic passports could help achieve significant protective aims. If it turns out that they can, measures to mitigate risks of unfairness or invasions of privacy will be needed. Are they, in themselves, a threat to freedom? It is hard to see why – but perhaps it depends on which of those 200 concepts one has in mind.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
×