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October 12, 2004

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Biometric babies

I've just returned from the photo shop where young (7.5 weeks old) BL posed for his passport photos. Under the strict new requirements for an Australian passport, the following was required: white background; mouth closed; eyes open; looking straight at the camera; no other people visible in the photo. It only took 4 attempts, which apparently is good going for a baby. Why don't they ask us to herd cats while we're at it?

Best of all is this passport will be valid for 5 years. Just like his sisters before him, BL will have a baby photo in his passport until he's age 5, at which point he'll look completely unlike his passport photo. Perhaps the biometric systems being put in place can allow for the rapid changes in a child's face in their early years, but I doubt it. As to how the world is safer because a baby's mouth is closed in a photo, I do not know.

 posted by Simon on 10.12.04 at 03:12 PM in the




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Comments:

Apparently in England now they are stating that you cannot smile in the passport photos anymore.

No smiling. Which would be terribly realistic, don't you think? Generally by the time you get to the immigration desk off a flight you look and feel like hell and the last thing you feel like doing is smiling.


It's a weird policy though...I guess the new thinking is that only the dodgy potential terrorist types smile, I guess.

 posted by: Helen on 10.12.04 at 04:18 PM [permalink]

I had the same experience when my son was 6 months old, while traveling from the US and back. It was not any easier: he kept sticking his tongue out for some unexplained reason.

Facial expressions aside, I'd like to think that children are given passports for their own protection from things like kidnapping, not for the protection of the rest of society.

 posted by: Alisa on 10.12.04 at 07:46 PM [permalink]

I agree Alisa, but I don't see the point of such precision for baby photos, especially for kids of such a young age when they change so much. Still, the system is the system.

 posted by: Simon on 10.12.04 at 07:59 PM [permalink]

Hey, Helen! Watchit! I smiled on my passport photo and I'm not a "dodgy potential terrorist type."

I'm just a normal potential terrorist type. HAHAHAHAHAHA.

 posted by: redsaid on 10.13.04 at 05:46 PM [permalink]




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