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Comment by yieldcrv | Hacker News Reader

the needed infrastructure can be just at the passport checkpoints

AST Spacemobile and Starlink's user experience will just require mobile phones. No adapters or base station. they'll find a way to power them, or extend signal from them. for the passport holder, that will just be client side and no connectivity necessary.

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No. It isn't "just at the passport checkpoints." It's everywhere. Passports are the only form of ID most people have abroad that are recognized by foreign governments and establishments.

Good luck to the French dude trying to drink in the U.S. without a passport, or getting stopped by the police in Łodz and not having any valid identification on you.

Any government id eg drivers license will work for that.

15 years ago, a Polish driver named "Prawo Jazdy" was causing a real nuisance to the Irish police, seemingly all over the country. Turns out they couldn't parse the document and they were looking for a man named "Driver's Licence". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/7899171....

Nowadays, the licenses in the EU are standardized, but at the same time, they are completely unreadable if you don't know the standard, since data fields are numbered, but not usually described in English.

This is very much false in much of the world. Especially if you have foreign paperwork, it's very likely a passport will be required by any kind of official asking for any other paperwork from you.

Nope that'll get you threatened to have the police called on you at the Walmart in Burlington NC. (Austrian federal ID trying to buy alcohol)

I am a dual citizen, and I have not found this to be the case in either of my two countries. Neither of them will accept photo IDs issued by the other, except for passports.

Don’t know about Lodz, but you can absolutely not get a drink in Utah with a French driver’s license. They insisted on a passport since I was from out of state.

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