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Fab. This always struck me as archaic and unnecessary for things like passports (and driver's licenses). Maybe it made sense before photos and biometrics. But t

Fab. This always struck me as archaic and unnecessary for things like passports (and driver's licenses). Maybe it made sense before photos and biometrics. But these days it adds nothing to a border guard's ability to decide if they have the right document for the person in front of them.

brighton36 5y ago
It didn't strike you as archaic. That's a lie. Its appealing to you. And you know full well that a border guard finds utility here. This is a comment in bad faith.
koolba 5y ago
> But these days it adds nothing to a border guard's ability to decide if they have the right document for the person in front of them. If the border officials are willing to perform a strip search, it cuts the number of people that could use a given fake ID roughly in half.
- wpietri 5y ago
  It really doesn't. If they have looked at the photo and decided it's a match, that already contains a lot of information on gender and sex a guard will use. If a guard decides there's a mismatch, we're well out into the extremes of the probability distributions. When we compare that to the chance the ID is a good enough fake to pass otherwise but bad enough that it doesn't have the gender right and the chance that it's just bureaucratic error, a mandatory genital inspection makes very little sense. And that's before we get to the practical costs of making border guards into dick inspectors. We could hypothetically get to your 50% number by just inspecting everybody's genitals, I guess. Except the false positive rate from turning security guards into medical experts would be through the roof.
yummypaint 5y ago
A few months ago I showed up for a flight and found out my ticket was accidentally booked with the wrong gender when I put my id in the scanner at security. The solution was to dash back down to the airline counter, have the attendant scribble something on the boarding pass, then run back to security who let me through. No further verifications or anything, just a waste of 3 peoples time. Specifying gender serves no security or verification purpose whatsoever. Why are airlines even asking for this info?
- wpietri 5y ago
  Exactly. A friend in college, who looked stereotypically female, accidentally ended up with "M" on her driver's license. She never had a problem using it; people just thought it was funny. It's absurd to think that if the photos and other identity markers match, some TSA agent is going to insist that you drop trou so he can decide whether you're sufficiently manly to use your own ID.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    Even if photos don't match, tbh. Pictures on IDs are generally years/decades old. I'm sure that anyone can sit in a plane with someone else (non biometric) ID without any issue at all. Hell, my son is literally 2 months old on its ID photo and this thing is valid for 10 years !
    - tablespoon 5y ago
      > Hell, my son is literally 2 months old on its ID photo and this thing is valid for 10 years ! Really? I thought child passports were only valid for 5.
      - pjerem 5y ago
        I’m talking about the national ID cards (in France) which are good enough to fly anywhere in Europe. iirc, you are right for passports, and anyway they are biometric mostly everywhere.

brighton36 5y ago

It didn't strike you as archaic. That's a lie. Its appealing to you. And you know full well that a border guard finds utility here. This is a comment in bad faith.

koolba 5y ago

> But these days it adds nothing to a border guard's ability to decide if they have the right document for the person in front of them. If the border officials are willing to perform a strip search, it cuts the number of people that could use a given fake ID roughly in half.

wpietri 5y ago
It really doesn't. If they have looked at the photo and decided it's a match, that already contains a lot of information on gender and sex a guard will use. If a guard decides there's a mismatch, we're well out into the extremes of the probability distributions. When we compare that to the chance the ID is a good enough fake to pass otherwise but bad enough that it doesn't have the gender right and the chance that it's just bureaucratic error, a mandatory genital inspection makes very little sense. And that's before we get to the practical costs of making border guards into dick inspectors. We could hypothetically get to your 50% number by just inspecting everybody's genitals, I guess. Except the false positive rate from turning security guards into medical experts would be through the roof.

yummypaint 5y ago

A few months ago I showed up for a flight and found out my ticket was accidentally booked with the wrong gender when I put my id in the scanner at security. The solution was to dash back down to the airline counter, have the attendant scribble something on the boarding pass, then run back to security who let me through. No further verifications or anything, just a waste of 3 peoples time. Specifying gender serves no security or verification purpose whatsoever. Why are airlines even asking for this info?

wpietri 5y ago
Exactly. A friend in college, who looked stereotypically female, accidentally ended up with "M" on her driver's license. She never had a problem using it; people just thought it was funny. It's absurd to think that if the photos and other identity markers match, some TSA agent is going to insist that you drop trou so he can decide whether you're sufficiently manly to use your own ID.
- pjerem 5y ago
  Even if photos don't match, tbh. Pictures on IDs are generally years/decades old. I'm sure that anyone can sit in a plane with someone else (non biometric) ID without any issue at all. Hell, my son is literally 2 months old on its ID photo and this thing is valid for 10 years !
  - tablespoon 5y ago
    > Hell, my son is literally 2 months old on its ID photo and this thing is valid for 10 years ! Really? I thought child passports were only valid for 5.
    - pjerem 5y ago
      I’m talking about the national ID cards (in France) which are good enough to fly anywhere in Europe. iirc, you are right for passports, and anyway they are biometric mostly everywhere.