If you were to take a gander at some of the deeper, darker corners of the world wide web, you would find a number of positively terrifying theories about how “the powers that be” will use the COVID-19 pandemic to manipulate and control us.

The most prevalent, and perhaps the most outlandish, states that Bill Gates – the founder of Microsoft – will be implanting us with a tiny RFID chip via the coming vaccines.

Others purports that this is part of a move toward a new serfdom, sometimes call “The Great Reset” in conspiracy circles, in which we are forced into a tighter economic loop reliant on delivery and ride sharing, allowing those at the top to skim more wealth from us.

And then there’s the ever-prevelant concerns about the surveillance state, in which we are monitored ever more heavily in hopes of harvesting our data keeping us ever closer to being in legal trouble.

It’s this last worry that has been fueled this week by news out of The Big Apple.

With the limited resumption of sporting events at venues in New York, Madison Square Garden and the Barclays Center will be used as testing grounds for a new digital pass that could confirm the owner’s COVID status. It will confirm an individual’s vaccination or recent negative coronavirus test.

First tested at the Brooklyn Nets game at Barclays Center on Feb. 27, the Excelsior Pass created with IBM, was tested for a second time during the New York Rangers game on Tuesday at Madison Square Garden.

Privacy advocates warn that these sorts of “passports” become a slippery slope, and could multiply in the coming years, allowing any number of agencies to have personal information about you and your health.

This also could create a scenario in which the non-vaccinated, either by choice or by circumstance, become second class citizens, unable to attend sporting events, travel, or even enter certain businesses.

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