Norway’s new passport – already a design classic?
I&#x27;ve been thinking that the security function served by a passport is very rapidly becoming obsolete (or at least redundant) for travel to most countries in the world. It could be replaced by a plastic photo ID card -- which you could then call a &quot;passport&quot; I suppose. And with strong biometrics, it could be replaced by nothing.<p>Let me explain this with typical cases where a passport is used:<p>(1) You&#x27;re entering your home country with your passport. Pretty much at every secure border crossing, they&#x27;re going to use your passport number to pull up absolutely every bit of info that appears in your passport, including your photo, plus a lot more info from the home country&#x27;s computers. The passport serves at most as a &quot;something you have&quot; security token. They already have your photo, so the only case where the physical passport helps is avoiding impersonation by someone closely resembling you.<p>(2) You&#x27;re traveling to a foreign country that needs a visa. In that case, you will have submitted a ton of information, including your photo, to the foreign country in advance to get the visa. When you arrive at the foreign country, it&#x27;s just like case (1) above.<p>(3) You&#x27;re traveling to a foreign country that doesn&#x27;t need a visa from citizens of your home country. In this case, the proof you need is that you are a citizen of that country. It is likely that the two countries have exchanged a mass of information to make the visa-free travel possible, or they can share the info about visitors in real time as they arrive.<p>It&#x27;s really the edge cases that the physical passport helps. Like obscure border crossings where they don&#x27;t have an electronic feed, or very third-world countries, or as a recognizable document to show to hotels&#x2F;banks&#x2F;airlines within a foreign country.<p>By the way, I&#x27;m not saying that this is a good development. In fact, it&#x27;s a terrible loss of privacy and furthering of worldwide surveillance. But it seems to be the trend, like the elimination of cash.