posted on Aug, 30 2009 @ 02:40 PM
If I may ask, what made the authorities detain you for ten hours? Did you have a really old passport [sometimes now, since there are newer ones,
having an old one gums things up]? Was it Canadian or American border guards that held you?
the passports we now have are harder to use because they take to long to do checks and so forth.
Not from my experience. Each time that I've come back to America, the worst part was waiting in line. Other than that, once I got to the "border"
the guy looked at me, put the ID page of my passport onto this scanning thing, stamped it, and said, "Welcome home." When I've traveled between
countries in Europe too, they border guards just look at it, see that I'm American, and stamp it.
Some really new passports, like my wife's, have a chip in it [which some people don't like] that, you just kinda walk through a thing and it
registers you.
I do like the idea of a card that has all of our personal info on it. A problem with it would be, who would regulate it? It would almost certainly
have to be something that is maintained by nations, instead of a supranational group because, not all countries register the same information at
birth, have Social Security Numbers, and so forth. [I personally don't like the idea of a worldwide deal anyway.] Then, beyond that, it's kinda
scary to think that everyone's personal data would be on a server somewhere. Hacker heaven! Perhaps paper everything is better!
I don't think that a regular book passport would ever be able to be done away with. Reason being, if for some reason, the police stop you on the
street and ask for your passport [which technically can happen in a foreign country] they wouldn't be able to see immediately if you've overstayed
your visa [tourist or otherwise] or if you even are allowed to be in the country! I'm sure if you lost your card, it wouldn't be as convenient as
if you have a photocopy of your ID page.