The story cited Gates’ answer in the forum and then declared,
“The ‘digital certificates’ Gates was referring to are human-implantable ‘QUANTUM-DOT TATTOOS.'”
But that’s not true. It’s a mash-up of two unrelated things.
First, digital certificates are used to send
encrypted information over the internet, as in the common case of
electronic signatures which are used to verify identity. They were officially defined by what is now called the
Telecommunication Standardization Sector in
1988 and have always been virtual, not physical.
When Gates mentioned their use in the forum, he was referring to digital certificates as part of an effort to create a digital platform that would
expand home-based, self-administered testing for COVID-19, the Gates Foundation said in an email to FactCheck.org.
He referred to the same effort to ramp up home testing at another point in the forum,
saying, “The testing in the US is not organized yet. In the next few weeks I hope the Government fixes this by having a website you can go to to find out about home testing and kiosks… Whenever there is a positive test it should be seen to understand where the disease is and whether we need to strengthen the social distancing. South Korea did a great job on this including digital contact tracing.”
South Korea, which has implemented an extensive
testing system, created a
website that showed information about where patients who tested positive for COVID-19 had been in order to alert others in the area. Although the information on the site is anonymous, there has been some
criticism that it’s an invasion of privacy.
Still, that’s a long way from “microchip implants.”
……….
Kevin McHugh, a bioengineering professor at Rice University who worked on the study, told us by email that the ink couldn’t be used as a tracking device.
“These markings were developed to provide a vaccination record and there is no ability to track anyone’s movements,” McHugh said. “This technology is only able to provide very limited (e.g. non-personalized) data locally.
These markings require direct line-of-sight imaging from a distance of less than 1 foot. Remote or continuous tracking is simply not possible for a variety of technical reasons.”