Germany bans digital doppelganger passport photos
reuters.com
reuters.com
It sounds like they're just taking steps to make it harder to do the already-banned thing. Hell, you can't even fix red-eye in the US:
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app...
> Can I remove red-eye from my photo? No, you can not digitally alter a photo to remove red eye. You will have to submit a new photo without red eye.
The "photographer submits via a secure form" approach detailed in the article leaves this loophole pretty open, too, unless the photographers have to go through some kinds of security clearance vetting to get access.
Passport picture photographers will need a license in Germany.
In fact when I lived in Austria, within a couple months I had access to more black market goods/services then I did after growing up in the US for 25 years. I would imagine Germany is the same.
> after growing up in the US for 25 years
and the average lifespan of the species being 12-15 years.
Germans are extremely law abiding and rule following. People are also generally worried breaking social norms.
So while it is technically possible for photographers to digitally alter photos before upload, there will be very few who would dare to do that.
Photographers rely on the revenue from passport photos for their businesses to survive. Initially the plan was to exclude professional photographers too but the government backtracked on that after outcry.
I could imagine a photo booth outputting a digital copy of the picture with signature so it is clear to the registration office that the picture has not been meddled with.
I could. But, I won't any more, because Germany will make life a hassle for me.
Disclaimers: it’s been 6 years and 2 years since I’ve had to do this.
They have a specially kited photo booth, where you also leave two fingerprints for additional biometric verification.
In order to renew your passport you need to schedule an appointment withyour local passport office.
Last time I renewed, 2013, it took 7 weeks until the earliest available appointment, which was a bit surprising. I'm sure, though, there's an emergency shortcut for a price.
The new passport arrives two days later by mail.
> Such manipulation of photos is typically invisible to the human eye, the researchers found.
[1] https://www.poliisi.fi/passport/passport_photo_instructions
https://lupakuvienvastaanotto.fi/Default.aspx
E: not to mention that the page you linked doesn't even say anything about prohibiting self taken photos.
After having my photo taken at the police office for at least my two latest passports it's somewhat surprising to hear about so many countries still using "the old way". There are such obvious advantages both in security and convenience by having the passport issuer take the photo and the technology is obviously available.
Unlike the old "guarantor" system where a licensed professional or public official (judge, lawyer, doctor, etc.) had to sign your application - basically, people who the government could verify the existence of and hold accountable - there's not very much traceability to the photo system.
As an American immigrant to Canada, I don't see the point - the US has never in my lifetime had either a professional photo requirement or a guarantor requirement for its passports, nor even a digital requirement.
Certainly, paying someone like a pharmacy for passport photos is not rare in the US to reduce the risk of out-of-spec photos leading to a rejection. But that's just a common personal choice and not obligatory.
I suspect Canada's guarantor system is inspired by the UK's, though I don't actually know.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Israel%E2%80%93New_Zealan...
But it's safe to say that if they were caught once, they've probably done it numerous times.
I'm sure they also have automated tools for detecting photo manipulation.
The whole process for getting an NZ passport is an order of magnitude easier than a European passport. Here in Australia I was able complete the entire process online, and they couriered my passport to me from the Sydney consulate. I also have a passport for a European country, and last time I renewed it, I had to make an overnight trip to the consulate and spend half a day getting my passport renewed. I needed to get my photo done by an approved photographer, and they also scanned my fingerprints to store in the passport's chip (they don't store fingerprints for NZ passports).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Garrett_(politician)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Zealand_passport#Use_by_Is...
This article (in German) is pretty good.
https://www.golem.de/news/foto-morphing-regierung-macht-digi...
That seems unlikely, so I think I misunderstood,could you expand?
„The photographers in Ingolstadt and the surrounding area also take a critical view of the idea of the Gerolfingen Minister of the Interior. Very critically. An adjective that keeps coming up: threatening his very existence. Theresia Häusler from Foto Porst Am Stein says: "We take 20 to 40 passport photos per day." At normal market prices of between 15 and 20 euros for the pictures, you can work out what the loss of revenue per day is. Up to 50 percent of the revenues could be lost in your branch, says Häusler“
I mean, you don't really need these businesses nowadays that much. Just take a picture with your phone, no need to develop it.
[1]: https://www.donaukurier.de/lokales/ingolstadt/Existenzbedroh... (German)
Regular automatic booths do not check for all those issues. Sure, you can probably create a booth that handles them, but then you will probably also start charging as much as the photographer. And its a one in 5 years affair, so why bother going to a booth?
Now, how difficult would it be for someone with enough criminal energy to forge passport photos to beomce a registered photographer who's allowed to "securely" upload passport pics?
e.g. Movember caused the airport gates to flunk me
How about analogically alter the photo?
What if the camera does that automatically without you knowing? Technically that still is "digitally alter a photo to remove red eye" (by the way there is no such thing as an unaltered digital photo). What if the camera lets you know it does and offers to turn that off - should you? What if an import script (which fires as you plug your camera/card) on your PC does that without you knowing? What if you know it's there? How does the result of any of these scenarios considered different from just doing that in Photoshop?
If there are signs it's edited, they'll tell you to come back with a different photo. (In this case, there was a photo shop a block away they had an arrangement with.)
The review process seems to be manual as far as I could tell, or at least it took O(days) each time for the results to come back.
Somewhat funny story: I and my wife renewed our passports this year and we both look a lot nicer:
10 years ago the requirement that we should not smile was enforced so strict and hamfistedly that I looked like a mugshot somewhat like the doom guy and my beautiful wife looked old and sad. I remember it taking a while before they thought I looked angry enough 10 years ago.
This year they only required that we didn't actually smile so the process was a lot quicker, police will probably not harass me on border crossings and my wife doesn't look like she is 20 years older ;-)
The downside to this is that as an expat, the only way to renew a passport is to fly across the country to visit the embassy in person. And Swedish passports only last 5 years.
Not telling that is the case but happens all the time in India. The local shop and this guy have a profit sharing deal :-)
Face recognition gives the green light, since (part of) the picture is a perfect match.
A human may not be fooled, automated face recognition may.
>Such manipulation of photos is typically invisible to the human eye, the researchers found.
I think its more like attacking a machine learning model - the difference in the photos may not be apparent at all, so a human reviewer might not catch something.
Funny story, when my passport was stolen in London I had to go to the US Embassy there to get a replacement, I brought a picture that I got in the tube station from a "passport photo machine". The embassy rejected it, requiring instead that I go to a specific photographer who was located about 2 blocks away. That guy charged me 20 pounds sterling for two black and white photos.
My wife kept that one after it had expired because in the photo I have a smoldering look of disgust :-)
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507542/facial-recogniti...
Apparently it's cause people can't figure out how to take a photo with glasses properly.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel_old/en/news/no-glass...
The photo is no different, it's just that there's prescribed size in imperial units for US visa photos. At one point I went to a photo shop to get US visa photos since I knew a photo booth wouldn't do the right thing, but they printed out Euro style photos by mistake, and I had to ask them to do US ones instead, so I got both sets of photos. Exactly the same zoom, exactly the same photo, just the Euro style was cropped more.
Edit: I looked them up:
https://www.gov.uk/photos-for-passports/photo-requirements - 35mm wide by 45mm tall.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-app... - 2 inches square.
DMVs already do this for drivers' licenses. It's odd that passports don't work the same way.
Driver's license is an even lower standard iirc, because it isn't abused as an ID in everything but name. Driver's licenses merely document qualification and most don't even expire so you will occasionally see some frail elderly person hand around their licence to show off how they were looking at 18 years old.
My license has a picture of a 15-year-old with the height and weight that's quite different from my current self..
My little suburb of 20k people has a USPS employee who handles them. Should be entirely possible even in rural areas.
Instead, they went to the photo department of the pharmacy 15 minutes away and got it done.
I know I've had my fingerprints scanned at the border a number of times. I'd be surprised if they weren't added to the record somehow.
Some countries (Russia comes to mind) require you to physically go to the visa centre to get fingerprinted as part of the visa application, and then again when you arrive at immigration
Other places where visas are online, on arrival, or not needed at all, tend to fingerprint at the border -- the U.S, Singapore, etc.
We currently don't need to get fingerprinted in the EU, but we decided to remove our freedoms so not sure if that will change next year.
Getting fingerprinted is such a common thing that I can't remember many specific countries requirements.
Only British and Irish passports are not obliged by EU law to contain fingerprint information in their chip. With the exception of passports issued by Denmark, Ireland, and the United Kingdom, all EU citizens applying for a new ordinary passport or passport renewal by 28 August 2006 (for facial images) and 28 June 2009 (for fingerprints) should have been biometrically enrolled. This is a consequence of Regulation (EC) 2252/2004 in combination with two follow-up decisions by the European Commission.
I had my prints taken, but it was for Global Entry IIRC. Agreed that I've never submitted prints for a US passport.
They don't safe your prints anywhere else then your passport or ID, so. Theoretically, you can get a passport with your picture for a different person. Very theoretical, and also very illegal. As long as the picture was within spec for biometric pictures, it was ok to bring your own.
Your point about people who can't leave their homes still stands.
EDIT: As every resident has a primary residency address registered, this also serves as, what in the US would call it, voter registration. No purging, no tempering, not separate registration. You just get the papers by mail to your primary address. Works as well for EU residents for local elections.
But, if you live in Croatia and the police already have your fingerprints from previous passports (along with you having an electronic ID card, which is standard and required), you can get a new passport quickly by applying online in the “e-gradani” or e-citizens service.
I describe German bureaucracy for a living. Here's a free sample: it's slow and inconvenient.
Distributing part of the process to photo booths means you can show up, hand your documents and leave. This is already more than most locations can handle. Adding to their burden won't help.
As someone else pointed out, some processes can be done by mail. Driving all the way to Berlin to sort out paperwork would put rural communities at a disadvantage.
For instance, my friend managed to do something by email. The same day, I got an answer from the same office confirming that it was impossible.
I spent months documenting the freelance visa application process, and worked with several relocation consultants to document it. A person I helped got a 3 year visa on the same day. It took me 2 months to get a 2 year visa, even though I coached him and had a far simpler case.
I have a copy of their process bible, a 1000 page PDF in thick German. I can assure you that they don't follow what's in it.
The vehicle processes are currently being overhauled. Vehicles can now be transferred online if the original registration was after 2015 and you own an electronic ID. More such processes will be coming shortly in all parts of administration.
It shouldn't have to be a 3 page guide, but there's enough variation in the process to warrant it. 5 years ago, just getting an appointment was an adventure.
Is this for a documentary series? I can imagine a David Attenborough series on bureaucracies of the world. Sounds both fascinating and scary.
I maintain All About Berlin. It's a collection of guides for settling in Berlin/Germany. It's basically a list of things I wish people explained to me.
Is there already a list of approved photographers who would submit directly, i.e. effectively "signing" the digital photo bitstream? What would be the qualification process for such a photographer? Who is liable if the photographer's computer is hacked and the image tampered prior to uploading?
> Such manipulation of photos is typically invisible to the human eye, the researchers found.
(The picture in the article is just a file photo of a passport, though. Not an example of the manipulation.)
Immigration use automated barriers and facial recognition to match the person to the digital photo on the passport chip.
The trick in the article causes the facial recognition algorithm to accept two different people for the same passport.
It started getting a bit silly towards the end as unregistered people started clogging up the queues, but it was far faster than the "automatic passport scanning" stuff.
Surely that was harder to forge than a passport photo. I assume the company in charge didn't offer enough bribes to the politicians making the decision.
There's a video link in the page.
Our government reacted precisely the same - passport/national id offices now have cameras.
It's a well known fact that intelligence agencies will use other countries passports as cover. Israel is well known for this. Which countries would you use? Well, a US passport isn't going to be a good cover in many countries, so it's often more neutral countries like Canada, Australia, Sweden.
Canada has tightened up their passport requires a few times after a rash of stolen and forged Canadian passports.
Smaller countries with less security issues have much more lax passport requirements. A friend was able to get a Vietnamese passport through her mom. She brought original birth certificates, etc. They were fine with just photocopies (that could obviously be changed).
Wild, I wonder how often this has happened.
I live in Buenos Aires (I'm from Argentina) and the embassy refers you to a couple of places where you can get your photo taken.
I went to the place that was close to a bus stop in the bus line I was using to get to the embassy.
It was a rather badly lit shop; I asked for them to take me a photo for the passport, and they did it with a rather lousy cellphone, and printed it right away in one of those auto machines that you can see everywhere you can print digital photos. They guy cut it with scissors.
Guess it goes without saying that it was of very bad quality; and yes, that is the picture that is now in my passport.
I do not need to alter it in any way, it's so bad probably my brother could enter Europe with it.
So photographers are still able to submit doctored photos. If they really want to stop this practice, the government must have full ownership over the chain of custody of these pictures (including hardware and software), OR be able to detect morphed pictures that are submitted by anyone.
In my opinion neither of these strategies will be implemented in practice, so this new law seems pretty pointless.
As often, why bother with an overcomplicated technical solution when a social one will do the trick just fine? Oh, who am I kidding, let's just use the blockchain instead!
And if you are a criminal who wants to obtain a fake passport, it's probably not out of your reach to use social engineering to convince your photographer to plug a USB stick with malware into their computer.
It does raise the bar of difficulty slightly, but it also gives criminals plausible deniability.
In order to get a new ID card, usually you hand in your old one, all I needed was a copy of my birth certificate and the registration in tje new city. The latter was easy, as in Germany registration and passports / IDs are done by the same office. The latter one was 10 Euro in stamps, 3 days later I had the copy in my postbox. Out of experience, your name on the box is enough.
So, theoretically you could get a new ID, with your picture and prints, but a different name, by ordering a birth certificate and have it mailed to you. No idea what kind of checks where built in in the background, but I hadn't the impression there were a lot. Germany, like 8 years ago.
Wouldn't work on scale, so. And way to risky for a one-off.
Look at notarizing documents. It's laughably insecure. It's just a stamp that lists a notary's name. Hiring a notary to work for you and expecting them to notarize documents for you, their boss, is completely normal and not seen as any sort of conflict of interest. Obviously a notary would quit their job rather than agree to backdate a document a day or two for the boss, right? Of course. And, despite the technical ease of making digital copies of documents or recording notary entries with timestamps or something, notaries tend to use a log book, and sometimes they just let the user fill it out themselves. In many states, the log book isn't even a requirement. And then there's the stamp. There's no standard for what it needs to look like, no secret token, it's just the words "notary public" and the name of a notary. And the names of all the notaries are listed on a public website somewhere. You can order a notary stamp on Amazon. And even if everything were impossible to fake, satisfying a notary of your identity is crazy easy. In many states, you don't even need your own ID, you can show up with someone else who has their own ID and have them vouch for your identity. And in many states the notary wouldn't even need to write down who that other person claimed to be. The whole system is absolutely screaming for digital reinvention, potentially including, yes, blockchain.
And yet, the system still mostly works just fine. A notarization is generally seen as pretty good evidence of something. People have some confidence in them. Folks you do business with will ask you to send them notarized documents. That's because most people who'd be willing to forge someone's signature in the moment aren't willing to go through the extra effort of faking a notarization, even though it's not a very high bar. And so it all somehow works, kind of. Weird, right?
See https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf
Until now, you could take your passport photo conveniently at home for next to nothing. I'm sure they will introduce exorbitant fees for a simple picture now.
For those that don't know, at least in Berlin (possibly other places) many U-Bahn (Subway) stations have photo booths for passport photos. They're apparently verifiable by the government, but I've never really understood how.
This sounds like those booths will no longer work. Anyone have any more info?
All you do is go to Belgium, and bribe a local mayor, where they have the ridiculous system of having local administration and control over the issuing (and mysterious "loss") of passports. Belgian passports are rife with fraud.
Are there particular evidence of fraud ? It's the second time I see this comment recently. Belgium has the Registre National where everything is centrally stored (including passport data, you can see all passports and IDs issued in your name there for instance), it's not totally a city-by-city thing.
In most cases this would amount to simply pressing a key and reading data off the screen.
Harder in anything less than a perfect environment. Now what about between non-friendly countries. In a warzone. On a road checkpoint. For the random checks at the gate of the plane or in the middle of the boarding process (for flights to the US they check it both at the gate and on the "boarding platform" now). At least the paper things provides "something" when that's all you have to ID someone.
In addition, many decentral databases (such as local registration databases) can be comprehensively and automatically queried by many individual authorities.
For the EU it's very rare as far as I know, both for EU citizens or foreigners.
Not for Canadians - unless this recently changed, fingerprints are not taken for a Canadian flying in from Canada, or from Mexico.