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i don't see how a physical passport with a physical stamp is any more meaningful than an offline smartphone with a passport app, either way the receiver needs s

i don't see how a physical passport with a physical stamp is any more meaningful than an offline smartphone with a passport app, either way the receiver needs some connection if they want to do any real verification

woodruffw 2y ago
It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I'm not denying that it's security theater or claiming that it's more meaningful; I'm saying solely that there are physical expectations that are going to be very hard to shake once you go off the beaten path.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  I took 'could possibly' + reference to cell service to mean that there is some sort of technical/infrastructural limitation. If your point is that the world is big and any effort to do this would take a long, long time to fully penetrate beyond a few highly developed Western countries, then I definitely agree.
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    Yep, that was the sole point.
- FreePalestine1 2y ago
  I think things generally start off as experiments in first world countries then trickle down eventually to third world countries. That's just the reality. 20 years ago not everything could be digitized because internet/smartphone access isn't widespread, but now more or less every single person on the planet has some sort of internet access. Things change eventually, they gotta start somewhere.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    More like 68% of people, which seems pretty far from "more or less every single person on the planet". https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/#statisticContainer https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
    - FreePalestine1 2y ago
      [dead]
    - umeshunni 2y ago
      But is probably very close to every single adult on the planet.
  - rswail 2y ago
    I assume that you are excluding the US banking system from that "trickle down" effect.
    - anticensor 2y ago
      US banking is behind many developed countries due to security model mismatch.
- technothrasher 2y ago
  > It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I've found that money is more meaningful than anything else to those bored officers. Either they don't actually care that much about your documents, or if they do, they're simply looking for a bribe. At least that's been my experience at out of the way border crossings in southern Africa. The most ridiculous experience I had was crossing into Zimbabwe with my 11 year old son. The officer wanted to see his birth certificate, which was still in the car that had already been driven across the border. So I had to leave the building, walk across the border, which nobody batted an eye at, get the document, walk back across the border, re-enter the building, and then present the document to the officer who didn't even look at it before letting me proceed to leave the building and walk across the border once again.
  - tonyarkles 2y ago
    I’m curious about your experience with this. A friend did a big tour through Africa about 15 years ago and when he got home he commented that you had to be careful to right-size your bribe: if your bribe was missing it not big enough, you’d get hassled about paperwork or maybe have to pay a “fine” or “document processing fee” to make up for it; if your bribe was too big, though, then you and the people you were travelling with would be subject to intense scrutiny. From what I recall about $5 USD was about right and $20 USD could result in the contents of your suitcase getting dumped in the dirt and very thoroughly rummaged through.
hilux 2y ago
Currently, a physical passport is globally accepted as its own "verification." That's the point.
- boredatoms 2y ago
  That factor is so important that the US intentionally restricted the usability of the US passport card to keep that status quo
rswail 2y ago
Physical passports, in the same way as physical currency, have numerous mechanisms for reducing the ability to forge the documents. So these documents can be checked locally without any form of communications to some central authority (which doesn't exist across national boundaries). They have visible anti forgery like UV printed symbols and information, underprinted background text and patterns, etc etc. So they are more "meaningful" than an offline smartphone with a passport app in that they do not require anything other than the officer's ability to see, feel and read the documents.
- quacker 2y ago
  If being forgery-resistant is the argument for paper docs, a passport that identifies me using strong cryptography is just as forgery-resistant (likely more so). And we could do a cryptographic verification without a persistent internet connection. (Or can’t we?)
  - rswail 2y ago
    A passport with strong cryptography would be forgery-resistant, however it is dependent on some form of PKI to distribute the public keys to every customs/border inspection point across the world, for every passport-issuing nation.
  - hakfoo 2y ago
    The argument is graceful degradation. Even when there's no connection, no electricity, you get some modest layer of security out of "it's hard to manufacture a convincing fake passport if you don't have large-scale resources behind you." What happens then with app-only passports? Do we close the border crossing entirely until the network is back up? Or do we rely on showing a QR code or NFC handshake that can't be properly verified? I'd think creating a fake passport app that reached those hurdles would probably be easier than getting access to specialized papers and printing technology.
  - PaulGaspardo 2y ago
    Modern passports with RFID chips already support that actually - https://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/PKD/BVRT/Pages/Basics.aspx https://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/PKD/BVRT/Pages/Basics.aspx
ddingus 2y ago
Paper does not have downtime. Tech does.

woodruffw 2y ago

It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I'm not denying that it's security theater or claiming that it's more meaningful; I'm saying solely that there are physical expectations that are going to be very hard to shake once you go off the beaten path.

whimsicalism 2y ago
I took 'could possibly' + reference to cell service to mean that there is some sort of technical/infrastructural limitation. If your point is that the world is big and any effort to do this would take a long, long time to fully penetrate beyond a few highly developed Western countries, then I definitely agree.
- woodruffw 2y ago
  Yep, that was the sole point.
FreePalestine1 2y ago
I think things generally start off as experiments in first world countries then trickle down eventually to third world countries. That's just the reality. 20 years ago not everything could be digitized because internet/smartphone access isn't widespread, but now more or less every single person on the planet has some sort of internet access. Things change eventually, they gotta start somewhere.
- fragmede 2y ago
  More like 68% of people, which seems pretty far from "more or less every single person on the planet". https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/#statisticContainer https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
  - FreePalestine1 2y ago
    [dead]
  - umeshunni 2y ago
    But is probably very close to every single adult on the planet.
- rswail 2y ago
  I assume that you are excluding the US banking system from that "trickle down" effect.
  - anticensor 2y ago
    US banking is behind many developed countries due to security model mismatch.
technothrasher 2y ago
> It's meaningful to a bored police officer in a less-than-democratic country who has nothing better to do than make my life annoying. I've found that money is more meaningful than anything else to those bored officers. Either they don't actually care that much about your documents, or if they do, they're simply looking for a bribe. At least that's been my experience at out of the way border crossings in southern Africa. The most ridiculous experience I had was crossing into Zimbabwe with my 11 year old son. The officer wanted to see his birth certificate, which was still in the car that had already been driven across the border. So I had to leave the building, walk across the border, which nobody batted an eye at, get the document, walk back across the border, re-enter the building, and then present the document to the officer who didn't even look at it before letting me proceed to leave the building and walk across the border once again.
- tonyarkles 2y ago
  I’m curious about your experience with this. A friend did a big tour through Africa about 15 years ago and when he got home he commented that you had to be careful to right-size your bribe: if your bribe was missing it not big enough, you’d get hassled about paperwork or maybe have to pay a “fine” or “document processing fee” to make up for it; if your bribe was too big, though, then you and the people you were travelling with would be subject to intense scrutiny. From what I recall about $5 USD was about right and $20 USD could result in the contents of your suitcase getting dumped in the dirt and very thoroughly rummaged through.

hilux 2y ago

Currently, a physical passport is globally accepted as its own "verification." That's the point.

boredatoms 2y ago
That factor is so important that the US intentionally restricted the usability of the US passport card to keep that status quo

rswail 2y ago

Physical passports, in the same way as physical currency, have numerous mechanisms for reducing the ability to forge the documents. So these documents can be checked locally without any form of communications to some central authority (which doesn't exist across national boundaries). They have visible anti forgery like UV printed symbols and information, underprinted background text and patterns, etc etc. So they are more "meaningful" than an offline smartphone with a passport app in that they do not require anything other than the officer's ability to see, feel and read the documents.

quacker 2y ago
If being forgery-resistant is the argument for paper docs, a passport that identifies me using strong cryptography is just as forgery-resistant (likely more so). And we could do a cryptographic verification without a persistent internet connection. (Or can’t we?)
- rswail 2y ago
  A passport with strong cryptography would be forgery-resistant, however it is dependent on some form of PKI to distribute the public keys to every customs/border inspection point across the world, for every passport-issuing nation.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  The argument is graceful degradation. Even when there's no connection, no electricity, you get some modest layer of security out of "it's hard to manufacture a convincing fake passport if you don't have large-scale resources behind you." What happens then with app-only passports? Do we close the border crossing entirely until the network is back up? Or do we rely on showing a QR code or NFC handshake that can't be properly verified? I'd think creating a fake passport app that reached those hurdles would probably be easier than getting access to specialized papers and printing technology.
- PaulGaspardo 2y ago
  Modern passports with RFID chips already support that actually - https://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/PKD/BVRT/Pages/Basics.aspx https://www.icao.int/Security/FAL/PKD/BVRT/Pages/Basics.aspx

ddingus 2y ago

Paper does not have downtime. Tech does.