4 ms·

> birth certificate, "statsborgerbrevet" (confirmation of citizenship), old passport (as proof of previous citizenship), etc. Aren't these kinds of documents j

> birth certificate, "statsborgerbrevet" (confirmation of citizenship), old passport (as proof of previous citizenship), etc. Aren't these kinds of documents just representations of the fact in Norway? That is, the document itself isn't important and you can just request a new one when needed?

tialaramex 7y ago
Yes, but, that depends on trusting your government. Check out the UK's Windrush scandal for example (named for the Empire Windrush, a boat that brought the first of thousands of Carribean immigrants to Britain in the late 1940s). A government department destroyed the records of who it invited to come here, and then a subsequent government insisted that if people didn't have proof it had no way to be sure they weren't illegal immigrants and so they should be deported under what it called the "Hostile environment policy"! In some cases there are old people, grand parents and great-grandparents, worked in the UK all their lives and then declared "illegal" and sent "home" to a country they'd left as kids because the government deliberately destroyed its own records. Outrageous.
- distances 7y ago
  Well. This is a very good reason indeed. I haven't had a reason to mistrust my government yet, but who knows what'll happen in the future. Anyway, I wouldn't even know what documents to store as I simply don't have too many of them -- even birth certificates aren't a thing here.
zvrba 7y ago
Now that I have Norwegian passport, I'm indeed in the police database; when I applied for a new passport I only had to deliver the old one. But with important stuff like this, I don't fully trust IT systems. Extreme solar flare, sabotage, security breach, … there's a number of (unlikely, but possible) reasons why IT records might fail. In a fireproof safe, paper is still the best archival method. And then, administrative f*ups are not without precedent as exemplified here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erased https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erased IIRC the cover letter I got with "statsborgerbrevet", it is non-reissuable. It is handed out only to you in person, you can't even send your lawyer. In the unlikely case I'd need a new birth certificate, I'd, I'd have to travel to my country of birth. Hassle. Call me old-fashioned, but paper is still the best archival/backup medium for stuff of real importance.

tialaramex 7y ago

Yes, but, that depends on trusting your government. Check out the UK's Windrush scandal for example (named for the Empire Windrush, a boat that brought the first of thousands of Carribean immigrants to Britain in the late 1940s). A government department destroyed the records of who it invited to come here, and then a subsequent government insisted that if people didn't have proof it had no way to be sure they weren't illegal immigrants and so they should be deported under what it called the "Hostile environment policy"! In some cases there are old people, grand parents and great-grandparents, worked in the UK all their lives and then declared "illegal" and sent "home" to a country they'd left as kids because the government deliberately destroyed its own records. Outrageous.

distances 7y ago
Well. This is a very good reason indeed. I haven't had a reason to mistrust my government yet, but who knows what'll happen in the future. Anyway, I wouldn't even know what documents to store as I simply don't have too many of them -- even birth certificates aren't a thing here.

zvrba 7y ago

Now that I have Norwegian passport, I'm indeed in the police database; when I applied for a new passport I only had to deliver the old one. But with important stuff like this, I don't fully trust IT systems. Extreme solar flare, sabotage, security breach, … there's a number of (unlikely, but possible) reasons why IT records might fail. In a fireproof safe, paper is still the best archival method. And then, administrative f*ups are not without precedent as exemplified here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erased https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Erased IIRC the cover letter I got with "statsborgerbrevet", it is non-reissuable. It is handed out only to you in person, you can't even send your lawyer. In the unlikely case I'd need a new birth certificate, I'd, I'd have to travel to my country of birth. Hassle. Call me old-fashioned, but paper is still the best archival/backup medium for stuff of real importance.