Comment by pikzen | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pikzen | Hacker News Reader

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Nobody uses pictures for identification. Not alone. In combination with everything else, maybe, but being French, I can even assure you that in most of the cases, people don't even look at your photo when checking your ID. They're always outdated, took in a weird lightning, and with a terrible quality.

From an administration point of view, whether you took a picture of your face and mapped it onto a 3D model, or just gave them the original picture makes zero difference. Last time I renewed my card, I gave them four years old pictures, I looked totally different, and they do not give a damn.

Identification through only a picture was dumb in 1985, and still is.

Whether it is dumb or not does not matter. The facts are that biometric passports with pictures and fingerprints are the law of the land in a lot of places.

That you got away with giving them four year old pictures is good for you, I tried and was refused (and had to go make new pictures). And I haven't changed all that much (the giveaway I guess was that the picture was the same as the one I gave them last time when I applied for a passport).

This is indeed the reason.

When making ID cards for my children, I was too lazy to also apply for a passport at the same time. Applied a few weeks later and the photos got rejected because they were the same as the ID ones. According to the clerk, they can be identical only when both submissions are on the same day.

In the UK, when I renewed my driving license online I was offered the option to have them pick up the photo from my passport record, rather than send in a new photo.

Since the passport had been issued about 9 years before, the new driving license contained a picture already 9 years old (and identical to the passport).

Nearly ten years later (nearing expiry), it therefore contains a photo about 19 years old. I like to think I still look like that youthful person, of course.

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