[cantrevealname]

I've been thinking that the security function served by a passport is very rapidly becoming obsolete (or at least redundant) for travel to most countries in the world. It could be replaced by a plastic photo ID card -- which you could then call a "passport" I suppose. And with strong biometrics, it could be replaced by nothing.

Let me explain this with typical cases where a passport is used:

(1) You're entering your home country with your passport. Pretty much at every secure border crossing, they're going to use your passport number to pull up absolutely every bit of info that appears in your passport, including your photo, plus a lot more info from the home country's computers. The passport serves at most as a "something you have" security token. They already have your photo, so the only case where the physical passport helps is avoiding impersonation by someone closely resembling you.

(2) You're traveling to a foreign country that needs a visa. In that case, you will have submitted a ton of information, including your photo, to the foreign country in advance to get the visa. When you arrive at the foreign country, it's just like case (1) above.

(3) You're traveling to a foreign country that doesn't need a visa from citizens of your home country. In this case, the proof you need is that you are a citizen of that country. It is likely that the two countries have exchanged a mass of information to make the visa-free travel possible, or they can share the info about visitors in real time as they arrive.

It's really the edge cases that the physical passport helps. Like obscure border crossings where they don't have an electronic feed, or very third-world countries, or as a recognizable document to show to hotels/banks/airlines within a foreign country.

By the way, I'm not saying that this is a good development. In fact, it's a terrible loss of privacy and furthering of worldwide surveillance. But it seems to be the trend, like the elimination of cash.

[kweks]

You're totally right, the paper passport could be considered a strange object in a very electronic world.

However, in my experience, truly electronically equipped borders are the edge case. The countries that take e-passports without any agent interaction are fee and far between, and typically only service citizens of that country.

Perhaps you're fortunate enough to travel in a selection of bleeding edge countries, via plane. Many, many people use land borders, and most land borders don't have electronic systems.

For an electronic system to work, you'd need 100% coverage of every border, or the system breaks - and that's hard to pull off.

The flip side is that there are security flaws with partial electronic systems. My country passed a law against travel to Iraq / Afghanistan for citizens, and yet, because they have 100% electronic border control for citizens, (and Iraq / Afghanistan don't..) - my passport has never been checked, despite having 'illegal' visas plain to see.

[wildmusings]

>For an electronic system to work, you'd need 100% coverage of every border, or the system breaks - and that's hard to pull off.

And therein lies the true absurdity of it. All travel stops if the internet goes down?

[tajen]

If we truely have high-level terrorists crossing borders, then yes, every person's identity should be checked against national police files and thus, when Internet is down, every decision should be suspended, if we want to be consistent.

Obviously I say "if" because those who actually want to deceive the system walk through borders by foot (taking advantage of the terrain), and register as migrants (under no less than 14 identities for one person - that's what happened for the last terrorist in Europe). Heightened passport security rules are great, but they mostly catch citizen who thought they were law-abiding, while it's much, much harder to deal with real criminality.

[wildmusings]

I'm not talking about a momentary outage. I'm talking about, e.g., citizens trying to return home after a crippling cyber attack that leaves America offline.

[Inconel]

Apologies for my ignorance but what was the reasoning behind banning travel to Iraq/Afghanistan for citizens of your country?

[therein]

He probably has a South Korean passport. The reason behind the ban was safety but I don't think a country should enforce this through such bans.

[johannes1234321]

The point of the passport is that information in there is readable easily. I can easily check my visa state as can the cop checking me somewhere. Also the passport can be checked by a porential employer to verify my integration state which might include a working permission. Also mind that in many countries of the world (i.e. in many African countries) technology is of limited availability. Any digital form would require data exchange formats and protocols. Printing/stamping/sticking can be done everywhere easily and the protocol "paper pages of size 125 mm × 88 mm" is trivial.

The thing you describe essentially also exists in many countries as a ID already, which I.e. can be enough for EU citizens to travel within the EU.

[kristofferR]

The EU countries have something very similar to that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identity_cards_in_the...

[prebrov]

Majority of countries that allow visa-free entry for citizen from 1st world countries won't have any data on particular citizens.

U.S. Government won't upload a dump of personal data of its citizens to Thailand or Indonesia, would it?

Moreover, if local governments would want this data from everyone let in without a visa (for TH and ID it's almost every country in the world except, probably, Africa) they'd end up with data on roughly 3 bln people. They don't have IT infrastructure to deal with it. This data will also be out of sync the second it's dumped from origins.

So, when you're being processed in Bali by border control on your first entry, the only thing they can do is confirm the validity of your document's physical properties, but not the identity it represents.

[cbhl]

For land/sea crossings between Canada and the US, there exists such a thing -- it's known as an Enhanced Drivers License and contains a barcode and RFID chip in it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enhanced_Drivers_License

But the Federal government can't mandate having these machine-readable identifiers on the State-issued drivers licenses, so we're stuck with Passport Cards and Passport Books in addition to the EDL.

[roywiggins]

They can mandate a lot, or at least bully- the REAL ID act has gotten most states onboard by threatening to not accept noncompliant State IDs for plane travel.

[uiri]

If by "most countries in the world" you mean first world countries - the EU numbers 28, add in the US, Canada, Australia, Japan, etc. you might get up to 40-50 countries where this is a reasonable expectation. I am sure there are even edge cases along the US-Canada border where the crossings aren't all electronic since it is overkill when 99% of the people crossing are locals.

There are 180-200 countries in the world. You characterisation of the vast majority of them as "very third-world" is rather crass. You are also ignoring possible police stops inside of foreign countries. In order to ask for a bribe, they check that you have all of your paperwork in order.

For (1), The Schengen area has already implemented this for EU countries with national identity card schemes. In contrast, the US doesn't have a national identity card scheme so you still need a passport (booklet by air, card by land or sea). Even illegal immigrants can get an ID card or Driver's license in California, for instance.

For (2), some countries just want to collect a little fee and don't care much beyond that as long as you stay for less than 30 or 90 days.

For (3), the US, for instance, extends the Visa Waiver Program to any country when the Visa reject rate drops low enough. I think you are greatly overestimating the level of cooperation between countries on visa policy.

it seems to be the trend, like the elimination of cash.

Again, this trend is limited to very first world countries. In most of the world, cash is still king.

[stevekemp]

The history of passports is quite fascinating:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-30988833

[DasIch]

Your from a country in which privacy isn't particularly valued I take it? I think you're heavily overestimating how much data is available to governments.

[prodmerc]

Why? I've seen such a system in action - based on the passport number, they pull up a digital copy of that passport, including the information on it and photo, as well as the list of dates when you traveled in/out of the country.

Each country definitely has something like this for their own citizens, and within the EU this information is shared (probably quite freely) between frontier agents and the police. A driver's license from the Netherlands can quickly be checked for authenticity/validity in Germany for example...

They don't need that much data, just photo and name, ID numbers, maybe the registered address(es).

Based on that, if you have any criminal history, you can bet they'll see it anywhere as it is priority information.

[non_repro_blue]

It's still an important component of human-oriented societies, to permit the individual to inform you of who they claim to be.

You rob individuals of agency, when you start dictating to them who you've declared them to be.

If two identical twins appear becore you, wearing sunglasses and gloves, are you going to demand that they remove their accessories, so that your special machine can declare them honest?

Sounds like an alienating place. How far will this go, once a person crosses the threshold, and steps into such a zone of absolute identity? Smart people might wish to stay the hell away from such a place.

Smart people might prefer a place that permits them the dignity of producing an artifact from their pockets, rather than acquiescing to a medical inspection.

[jzwinck]

On several occasions I have been rather nearly killed by reckless drivers. In each instance I recorded the license plate number and phoned the police. In each instance the police said they could not be sure who was driving therefore could not even begin an inquiry.

In your quasianonymous utopia, which twin is to blame when one of them comes to my country and injures someone? Neither?

[darklajid]

Your anecdotes seem scary. So anyone can get away with reckless driving?

Over here the owner of the car needs to identify the driver. If that person refuses to do that/cannot do that, they might be required to have a "journal" (think: like a cab) for each and every ride with the car..

[non_repro_blue]

I'm not going to dodge the premise of your quandary, which is that accountability and responsibility are necessary components of a civilized society, and that idealizing anonymity also introduces problems and is prone to abuse.

Your example is disconnected from this premise though, for other reasons. Even with air-tight biometrics, determining the exact identity of which twin crossed the border, the police would still have their hands tied.

Biometrics would not solve a hit-and-run manslaughter, simply because the level of surveillance necessary to prove the identity of every passenger in every driver's seat at all times would amount to oppressive totalitarianism.

In reality, a rental car provided to a vactioning traveller could have been stolen for a joy ride, and possibly returned before the renter noticed it was gone. The police would need a stroke of luck, in the form of some video footage or a witness further corroborating the identity of the driver at the time of the incident. A border crossing, and a rental agreement wouldn't confirm the criminal, even if a jury might convict on that basis alone.

Anyway, back to accountability. There's a fine line painted at the boundary of the statement: Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear.

It's always going to come down to the constituents of a given society, to determine the level of discipline required to participate with adjacent members. An individual's neighbors will determine how volatile their environment is. A permissive environment may attract those rejected from other regions. A fortress may sterilize all behavior. Everyone should be able to choose their own peers, according to preference, but what if one finds themselves chosen for the purpose of exploitation? There's no easy answer to this situation. Complex systems require defense mechanisms to persist and withstand chaos. My point, though, is that people should understand which side of the defense mechanism their on, and whether they are participating deferes, or regarded as the defended, or perhaps if they are the repelled chaos.