New passport rules

After the ban on jokes at airports, comes a campaign against smiles

BUSINESS TRAVELLERS around the world have been puzzled by a bizarre mystery. For months, airport officials have done nothing to make our lives worse. How come? Why are they not doing their jobs? We feel oddly neglected.

Well, the long wait is over. A new set of suitably ridiculous rules developed in the West is expected to shortly spread misery to airports around the world. The new regulations can be summed up thus: from now on, All Passengers Must Look Like B-Movie Librarians.

This is not a joke. There are the four new rules in the West for passport photos and related documents:

1) Passengers must push their glasses to the ends of their noses and gaze over them, not through them.

2) Passengers must not smile.

3) Passengers must pull their hair back so that it doesn't cover their face or ears.

4) Passengers must wear frumpy floral dresses and have their hair in a bun.

Okay, so I made up the last one, but it's only a matter of time before it joins the list. The first three requirements, with minor differences in emphasis, are already in force in the UK, Germany, the United States and Canada, and are expected to spread from West to East over the next few months.

I learned about this when I sent some photos of my son to a consulate and they were rejected.

“We can’t accept them. He's smiling,” complained the staff member.

I looked at the photo and shook my head, saying: “No, he isn’t. He’s a teenager. That’s not a smile. I would describe it more as a sardonic grimace.” This was clearly true but she refused to accept it and told me about the new rules on passport photos.
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The regulations have caused lots of problems. Officials have rejected hundreds of thousands of people who have a stray hair over their faces, or wear their glasses where they are supposed to be worn, over their eyes, rather than over their nostrils. The UK authorities rejected 15,000 baby photos before announcing that they may be lenient for passengers aged 12 months or less.

There are other problems too. A UK man named Paul Ashman had his passport photo rejected because it was “too dark”. In a letter to the BBC he pointed out that he did not know how to fix this, pointing out a salient fact: “I am black.”

Why is this happening? “Digital photo analysis machines get confused by people who smile,” the consular official told me. But the following day, a friend of mine told me about Japanese cameras which not only have the usual face-recognition functions, but a SMILE-recognition option. You leave it on in the corner of the room and every time people look happy it snaps a picture.

How come hi-tech multi-million dollar airport photo analyzers cannot cope with a stray hair, while Japanese pocket cameras can differentiate between different expressions? It seems suspicious to me. My Japanese friend offered to get a smile-recognition camera for me, but I politely declined.

“I don’t think I need one,” I said. “Now if you had a camera which can detect a sardonic grimace, THAT I could use.”
 

Technorati Tags: Passport photo,rules

Comments

[Julie]

Nury, I think you need to have a dig at male librarians too. They tend to be much worse dressed than their female counterparts. ;-)
I used to be a librarian and we had great fun taking a photo to prove the stereotype. All the women who wanted to be in it had to wear a twinset and pearls. The men turned up in their heavy 60s glasses and chunky vests. They looked a lot more like their everyday selves . . .

[Angela]

Try US embassy, more friendly, they accepted my smiling photo. No questions asked, except if I am going alone or with a boyfriend :) seriously, that's what the guy asked me before he gave me my visa.

My sister on the other hand was told to take another photo because they thought she "winked" in the first photo. Actually her left eye is smaller than right eye but the photographer told her to open her eyes wider for second photo so she ended up looking like someone was strangling in her passport photo.

[fardel]

This column is funny,and its timing too

i was supposed to travel to Europe at the beginning of october and my passport was expiring before my return;

In june , I applied for a new ID card which was supposed to be ready within two months;
After two months, without news i investigated and went to one of the government office where I am a celebrity;

clerk: "Your request was rejected, your picture was too white"
Same story as your , but the way around
Me: Can I sent new pictures?

clerk:Nope, the file has been destroyed, scrapped and will be used as confettis for Carnival next year ( I suspect the one of you reported me as a clown)
clerk:You have to start over.
Las t week , I went to renew my passport;

clerk:You will have to come back, the biometric passports are now mandatory, the machines are not hooked up yet
I went back last monday.

clerk:Your pictures are not good!
Me: But, I used the same pictures last month for my Id card;

clerk:Yes but for the Id card, the back ground must be grey, for the passport , the background must be white!
Come back tomorrow!

I come back next day and stand in line for another two hours.
My file is complete and I am relieved, I shall be home on time for lunch.
The clerk gives me a number
Me: What is this for,,

clerk: You have to wait for your turn to give your fingerprints !
It takes 20 minutes for the clerk to process on the computer , what was written on the papers;
clerk:The computers and systems were installed this weekend and we did not receive the training yet.

[fardel]

They looked a lot more like their everyday shelves . . .

How could that be?

[fardel]

the reason behind this rule is simple:
the Universal Friend (You know , the guy who is hiding in Uruguay , where Pampa grass is plentiful and higher than bush) started a war against bad guys
The rest of the planet is filled by them , all of them ( i.e us)

Now imagine the following
you are permanently suntanned or darker in color;
You are waiting in line to enter the Country of Freedom, the country of milk and honey where only 36 million people live below the poverty line .( that was before 2008)
The Immigration officer just discovered that her boyfriend cheats on her with somebody your color.

You are in deep s..t ( I men trouble)

Your sibling has insulted a federal agent
This is a federal offense:
you are part of a conspiracy to destabilize a Federal agent on duty , the gate keeper Gate to this beautiful country where Snow White is from.
You are part of a conspiracy to darken the complexion of future citizens who might become their president some day.
This becomes a crime against Humanity

You get arrested, and your pictures is published worldwide at the speed of sound or faster:
How do you expect the Medjash to sell the story that you are a bad girl if you have a big smile on a pretty face?
Come on !
be serious and STOP smiling;
Or stay home!

[Omar]

Nury the case of Paul is funny.It seems that Paul will have to bleach his skin like Michale Jackson to have a passport. Can anybody suggest a better idea?

[sej]

We've had that requirement here for a while, where the background can't be too dark, or too bright, you are not allowed to smile, you have to wear plain shirts, again, not too dark or too bright, but definitely no patterns. Apparently they also ask you to remove any piercings you might have, I'm not sure on this one, but it certainly wouldn't surprise me. For some bizarre reason, I think Australian airport staff seem to take this stuff more seriously than even the Yanks.

I think also, the people using the machines and taking the photos actually don't understand the systems they're using, because I'm sure the photo recognition software, can actually cope with smiles and the like quite well.

And Nury, you're using that word, "sardonic", a lot lately. What's the story?

[Vince A]

With so many passport photos not meeting the requirements, soon we shall all be required to have our photos officially taken at the passport office, where:

- we shall have to wear a standard-colored robe (probably orange)

- the white background will have metrics showing our height

- our passport number will be printed on a piece of paper which we shall hold across our chest during the photo-shoot.

- And because of the long wait, we shall all be tired and haggardly.

And guess what, the smiling photographer will not need to remind us: "Don't say cheese!"

[Christy]

Not to mention that they change their requirments for photo backgrounds ALL THE TIME. They go from pink to blue to white and back again.

My (conspiracy?!) theory is that this ensures you can't use the same batch of photos, say, from a year ago. You show up with your photos all ready, but then they tell you, "Sorry, now we only accept photos with a blue background.", and then you'd have to use their ridiculously-overpriced photo booths. (I had to fork out $40 for 4 ugly photos, of which they are only going to use 1...)

[stef]

How come hi-tech multi-million dollar airport photo analyzers cannot cope with a stray hair, while Japanese pocket cameras can differentiate between different expressions? It seems suspicious to me. My Japanese friend offered to get a smile-recognition camera for me, but I politely declined.
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a mystery indeed. the Japanese have always been positive people, at least that's the impression i get from my Japanese friends and teachers throughout the years. Westerners do have that "doomsday" thing going on...or it might just be me.

[mahjuja]

Mr. Jam, I'm confused, does this happen at the airport or rather at immigrations and visa offices in consulates and embassies? What about the interesting conversations we have to have at the airport immigrations? How have those evolved? Last time I went through immigrations was in Dehli airport. We were there to attend a students' conference, and one of the members of our delegation had to give a presentation of her paper for the immigration official.

[TS]

I once worked at a place that used face recognition for access control. You went into this little booth where you stood against the back wall (no short or tall people allowed), stretched to reach (no short arms allowed) a keypad to type a PIN code and you might pull the right grimace to get you access.

Mondays and Fridays were the worst for access problems. Monday morning people looked too sad and Friday afternoons they looked too happy, the rest of the time people were better at catching that particular grade of gloominess that was captured in the original photo used for comparison.

[Leo]

lol, I just gave them a digital softcopy with perfect modification using Photoshop years ago...I think I had kind of deceived somehow?

Well, whatever. they have plans to catch the terrorists, the terrorists have tricks to bypass those scans and searches if they have to..Don't forget one thing: it's a plastic world, some people can make their disguises through all those security.

[sej]

Yeah, how do women (or men for that matter) with breast implants get through security when they've got huge bottles (bags) of water just under their skin, and you're not allowed to carry water on to the plane?

[Angela]

LOL..great comments gang.

TS - that is a very height-ist policy they got there. I am sure short people like me have no chance of getting job interview as I cannot even reach the PIN pad.

I already felt the full strength of this height-ist revenge in Germany, on the transfer bus that ferries passenger from the plane to the terminal and vice versa. I realized to my horror, upon stepping into the bus, that I cannot reach the hand grab. And you know how spacious these buses are, so when the driver braked, the only thing I can grab on to is the waist of the passenger next to me. Luckily for me he doesn't mind the free hug. The next time I got on the bus for return flight, I stood right next to the door so I can hold on to the pole.

Now that I am back in the sin city, I feel a lot more sympathy for the tall angmohs who always have to bend their neck on our double decker buses.

[Rika]

Oh tell me about it! When my passport needed renewal the only place in England to get the right photo was a little photographic studio next to the German embassy - smart guy - while a photographer friend worked for days in his little studio using a template to get the perfectly sized shot of himself. Problem is the proportions of the face have to be right and he has a rather long face - try to change that!

So we didn't trust anybody and on a day trip to Germany which was actually dedicated to granny's 90th birthday we dashed to town to see a proper German photographer. It was done in a jiffy, cost a lot of money and I look like a drug addict in desperate need for a shot.

If in a 1000 years archaeologist would do a dig in Germany and find those passports they would instantly conclude that the country went down because of severe substance abuse of the whole population. That is how history is made!

[Nury]

Thanks for the comments, Rika and others. Since several members of this gang have visited or are visiting Germany (Angela, Karuna and myself, for a start) we can confirm that the Germans are a cheery lot.
They even smile about grim things. My hotel offered bicycle tours of the concentration camps!

[Nury]

While the passport people are becoming more miserable, the immigration officers are becoming cheerier.

There was a big TV screen above the immigration desks at Frankfurt this week saying "SERVICE WITH A SMILE".

For years, these people have made my life miserable, but just recently they have been soooo nice.

[Angela]

Nury, if my comment catches you at the Frankfurt airport, still outside, not yet waiting to board your flight, then quickly go and buy water or better yet, find drinking fountain and quench your thirst, or if you are not thirsty, go drink and eat anyway because once you cross the immigration counter, it is like crossing the border from malaysia to singapore, bottled water and other sugary drinks and candies cost twice as much or even more.

I did not know this and was not hungry nor thirsty before I crossed the border but once I crossed, I strangely felt hungry and thirsty and went hunting for vending machines, which I discovered to my chagrin, were specially designed to rob hungry, thirsty, and stupid passengers who have spent their last euros on useless glass souvenirs for their mothers back home.

So since I am staunchly against capitalism and feel that it is my moral obligation to stand my ground and oppose over-priced junk food vending machines (read: I am just cheap), I told myself I will wait to eat in the plane. Guess what? when you make a noble resolution like that, it is like a challenge to murphy's law. loud speaker announcement came on to say there will be a delay of 45 minutes as they are still cleaning the plane.

[fardel]

An on top of that , you have no reserve (I.e fat around your waist line)

[mahjuja]

Mr. Jam, I just remembered, they started something like that in Bangladesh, you know, a new emphasis on better immigration services. So, the immigrations officer greeted me with the query,"How are you?". You can imagine how unusual that was, that my travel companions asked me if the guy was an acquintance or something!

[Rika]

Oh yes and always have enough small change because you may not find any shop open at all after you get to the gate; only wending machines which with a bit of luck are working.

Last time in Hannover they opened the bar 10 minutes before boarding... they say Germans are very punctual, but sometimes the question is: For what?

You need to be the stretchy one of the Fantastic Four, tucking your bum into the airplain seat while paying for the water at the bar.

[Erich]

Hello Mr Vittachi
Loved the article on the passport photos but I just wanted to mention that this curse has already reached Asia. For our Chinese visa photos, we have had to have a single specified background colour, no smiles were permitted, and, last year, my partner had to head back a third time for new photos because they required that he wear a specific blue coat for his photo, even though only a part of the collar was visible.

I don’t look my best ‘full frontal” (because my ears become a trifle too predominant), so I have usually tried to turn left or right ever so slightly (2 or 3 degrees) but without luck – new photo needed. I had to remove my glasses altogether so I was squinting as if snow-blind, but as I wasn’t smiling, that was ok.

At least I know that if I am ever on the run, all I need to do is smile a lot and no-one will ever be able to recognize me as I make my escape over international borders.

Cheers

[chokneth]

LOL this is sooo true. I just had my passport photo taken and the photographer told me not to smile. Now I had my hair permed a couple of months ago, but when I came back to get my photos, they edited it and made my hair appear straight.

[Nury]

It's clear from all the comments above and from the emails that I have received that many people are actually distorting their faces (physically or by computer graphics software) to get their photos accepted.

In other words, the passport authorities are forcing people to create pictures that don't resemble them! This is not smart.

[mahjuja]

Mr. Jam, you know what they say,"You may win the battle but you can't win the war." HA HA HA.

[Kwong]

OK ... I now know that they love to use the mug shot on the passport. My daughter is just about to dye her hair to some funny color .... should I tell her to hold off until she has her photo taken or what :(

[Chamin]

Every time I travel overseas, I try my best to have the same appearance as in my passport photo. The only time I had slightly longer hair, I was asked to show my ears to the immigration officer. I know this is partly due to Sri Lankans overstaying and traveling with other people's passports, but I still wish that things are better.

Now that immigration and visa has become such a hassle, I only have to think about it at the immigration counters and when taking visa photos. My smile disappears immediately :-(.

[business card scanner]

Funny!
I really heard about some countries with some strange rules about their passport photos. totally bizarre!

But hey, at least it's for a good cause, right? That investment, time and headache worth it.
Think on the bright side - at least we don't have to dress up like a cowboy and put our tongue out or something.