The whole paper passport thing is just ridiculous in the age of ubiquitous digital communications and photography. Any official requiring your picture could take it and send it to an AI for identification right on the spot.
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 most cases this would amount to simply pressing a key and reading data off the screen.
In addition, many decentral databases (such as local registration databases) can be comprehensively and automatically queried by many individual authorities.