The paper passport's days are numbered
Governments and border agencies are rapidly expanding biometric gates and app-based systems that can let travelers cross borders using facial recognition or phone-stored credentials instead of traditional passport stamps. Commenters weigh potential security and efficiency gains against serious concerns: PKI key revocation at global scale, dependence on fragile or proprietary smartphones, loss of user-held physical proof, database errors, outages, and expanded surveillance. Many see digital credentials as useful optional tools but argue that long‑lived, offline‑verifiable physical documents remain essential for resilience, rights protection, and inclusivity.
Technical foundations & security
- Many note that e-passports already use PKI and chips; a “digital passport” is mostly moving the same signed blob to phones or cards.
- Big concern: how to handle CA key compromise without invalidating millions of documents. Ideas:
- Short-lived intermediate certs with public logs or timestamp services (RFC 3161) to prevent backdating.
- Revocation with cut‑off dates, OCSP, and registries of “known good” IDs.
- Others stress the need for offline verification: border devices preloaded with root keys; fallback to visual anti‑forgery checks if systems are down.
Current deployments & pilots
- Examples cited: Singapore’s largely automated, sometimes passport‑less gates; EU/Schengen e‑gates and upcoming Entry/Exit System; US Mobile Passport Control and CBP ROAM; digital ID ecosystems in places like Denmark, Estonia, and Ukraine.
- These are mostly add‑ons: physical passports are still required or strongly assumed.
Phones as ID & single point of failure
- Strong resistance to making smartphones mandatory for travel; issues include battery, breakage, theft, unsupported/custom ROMs, OS “insecurity” flags, and people banned from owning smartphones.
- Some suggest government‑issued, purpose‑limited devices or keeping IDs on smartcards instead of phones.
- Others like digital convenience but insist physical documents must remain as fallback.
Privacy, surveillance & control
- Worries about pervasive facial recognition, linking travel, SIMs, and movement into central dossiers, and “border tech” expanding into everyday life.
- Concerns that digital credentials (including web standards) will normalize strong ID checks everywhere and increase corporate/government tracking.
- Some see this as a human‑rights issue: freedom of movement shouldn’t depend on owning a smartphone.
Paper passports, stamps & records
- Many want to keep physical passports and even entry stamps, both for personal records and as independent proof when databases fail or are wrong.
- Digital‑only visas and statuses (e.g., UK schemes) are criticized: if a database entry is lost or “computer says no,” people can’t prove rights to live, work, or reenter.
Practical & geopolitical limits
- Remote borders, poor infrastructure, disasters, and less‑developed crossings are seen as long‑term blockers to going paperless globally.
- Skepticism that all states would ever share a unified system; sovereignty, politics, and differing ID cultures make full digital replacement unlikely for decades.