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Comment by JSavageOne | Hacker News Reader

> With their microchips and holograms, biometric photos and barcodes, today’s passports can seem like stunning feats of modern technology

Actually it boggles my mind how low tech it is to require a physical paper document for international travel in 2020.

My U.S. passport expires in less than 3 months, and for me to renew my passport right now I'd have to mail it in and wait 2-3+ months due to COVID19 staffing reductions. Most countries don't allow you to travel with less than 3 months till expiry on your passport.

So basically I'm trapped in the U.S. now due to this stupid physical document (just arrived back in the U.S. after living abroad so wasn't anticipating this). I despise passports, and hope to live to see the day where we're no longer required to present them.

Of course I'm still privileged to have a U.S. passport, as anyone who speaks to citizens of countries like India already know.

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I think it's a matter of priorities and experience.

I've seen various IT failure modes. This results in me being completely unwilling to be caught in a strange country WITHOUT something physical and tangible in my hand.

In fact, the most disempowering feeling in my life has repeatedly been when a border guard takes my passport away to one building and I'm directed to proceed somewhere else (happened a lot at Canada/US border especially after 911). You feel completely naked and have no defense other than "this random dude with a gun took it away and told me to stand here" - opening itself to any number of Kafkian nightmare scenarios.

The Kafkian scenario is why I posted the cousin comment about Paul Robeson. The US didn't use passports controls to keep him out, but to keep him in.

(Comrade Rabinovich, with whom will you be staying in Israel? / My cousin. / But comrade, you told us you had no relatives abroad. / That's right, he's not abroad, he's at home in Israel. I'm the one who's abroad.)

It's an international standard with 196 countries. It's difficult to get 196 countries to agree on anything. There's now a chip in almost every passport, but the paper version provides great backwards compatibility for places where there is no Internet or the Internet is unreliable and they still need to control the border.

For other places, countries make bilateral agreements that eliminate the requirement for the book, such as the passport card and nexus.

Biometric only has a lot of annoying edge cases. What happens if you're severely burned and then need to cross a border? Biometrics aren't going to be able to identify you, but if you're in possession of a passport that hasn't been reported stolen, and eye color, height and weight all match, they'll let you through. Similarly, a passport issued to a newborn is not going to get a biometric match on a four year old kid, but if they possess the passport, eye color, and approximate age match, and they're traveling with their parents, they'll be let through. The possession of the document lends significant evidence that the traveller is who he/she says they are.

My country stopped issuing passports altogether due to Corona.

Mine expired a few years ago, because I didn't bother to renew it being a EU citizen with no interest in travelling outside the Schengen area.

I think the restriction has been lifted since, but for a time I was confined to the borders of the EU.

As a citizen of a EU country I still need a passport to travel the eu as the passport is the only form of official ID my country (Denmark) issues.

In theory, you don't need an ID to travel in the Schengen area as a citizen of the EU: https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/travel/entry-exit/eu-c...

I am actually curious how you would go about proving that you are a citizen of the EU. I am sure you need some form of identification to board an international flight even though it might be within the Schengen area.

It seems to depend. I have never been asked to provide id when flying SAS with a business ticket between denmark and sweden or finland.

That would probably be due to the Nordic passport union[1].

Locals have been able to travel between the countries freely without a passport since 1954.

[1h] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_Passport_Union

So, from experience squatting in the Netherlands... nobody bothers to check, unless you look like you might be from Eastern Europe or outside Europe, at which point they throw you in a foreigner detention centre until you can prove your identity or they can deport you to wherever they think you might be from.

My experience driving through the EU is that barely anybody cares. You may be stopped at internal borders if your car plates don't match a Schengen-area country, but that's it.

You'll need your ID to stay in a hotel/AirBnB though. So unless you squat or camp illegally, better have it with you.

Plenty of places within Schengen where wild camping is legal, and couchsurfing (through platforms other than couchsurfing.com) is still a thing.

If you have a life and death emergency you can still get a passport within 72 hours. Despite the phrasing this also includes things like a close family member getting injured. Aside from that yes you may need to wait. Note that the backlog is being worked through as shown in the data in section 3: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/traveladvisories/....

This is just part of life in a global pandemic. Essential services will still happen but otherwise life and safety is the priority.

> This is just part of life in a global pandemic.

There's nothing about a pandemic that says that passport issuance/renewal must be closed down all year keeping Americans trapped in the U.S. Stop excusing low standards.

Not to mention even if we weren't in a pandemic the whole process of passport renewals is stupid and overly time-consuming. If my information is all the same, why can't I just upload my new passport photo online and have my new passport automatically printed and sent to me?

> There's nothing about a pandemic that says that passport issuance/renewal must be closed down all year keeping Americans trapped in the U.S. Stop excusing low standards.

Indoor workers face serious health risks if they have to go into the office and can't maintain social distancing. Do you really think someone should put their family's life at risk because you waited to the last minute to renew your passport and want to go on vacation?

Before you accuse others of low standards I would do a little introspection. The only person you have to blame for waiting until you were months away from expiration is yourself. You could have easily had it renewed while you lived abroad. My advice for when you have a task like a passport renewal that needs repeating once every 10 years: consider doing it before 97.5% of the time has elapsed.

In fairness, part of the problem here is the US passport renewal system. I recently renewed my Irish passport. I was able to do it online with an uploaded picture, it was processed in less than a month despite COVID (usually it's a week), and then mailed to my US address.

Passports themselves aren't a problem. The problem is the bureaucracy around it.

Nobody can explain why it takes 3 months to do renewals. Why do they need the same documents from 10 years ago again? Don't you already have it saved somewhere that I am a citizen? Why do they need another ID from me again?

This is even worse for visas. Why do they need the same documents again and again and again?

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