DPSU: SafeBorder helps expose counterfeits of COVID certificates
Border guards effectively use technical equipment and software to check documents in order to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection. After all, the pandemic has not subsided - the number of patients is growing. Therefore, border guards urge citizens to adhere to the rules of epidemiological safety, and the only effective way out in the fight against the disease is vaccination. In addition, both in Ukraine and in the countries of the world, there are certain relaxations for people who have been vaccinated.
However, individual citizens, putting others at risk, sometimes try to use fake COVID certificates confirming citizens' vaccination, negative test result, or recovery from illness.
To strengthen measures to detect violators since August 2021, employees of the State Border Guard Service have been using SafeBorder software, developed by the EU Trust Network in cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine. Actually, this allows border guards to quickly check the validity of the document and its belonging to the relevant person who is going to enter Ukraine. When scanning the QR code on the document, SafeBorder shows whether the certificate is valid or not.
In total, since the beginning of the use of the system, border guards have already checked almost 630 thousand certificates. In the process of scanning only in the last 3 weeks it was possible to identify about 300 documents that had signs of forgery.
Once again, we emphasize that you should not use forged documents at the state border, because such illegal actions entail criminal liability. Moreover, if our fellow citizens use a fake to travel abroad and the fake is detected by law enforcement officers of the country of destination, then they will also be liable under the law of the country to which they are heading.
State Border Guard Service of Ukraine
