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Comment by _ph_ | Hacker News Reader

The funny thing is, as I recently had to renew my ID card, I would have been happy, if the local authorities had offered to take my picture. They rejected the picture I brought, because they claimed my head was angled not straight ahead enough and I had to run out to find someone to take a picture of me. Luckily they could refer me to a local shop nearby which was open at that time, but considering the low quality of those ID photos, having a web cam in the office would be an obvious and easy improvement both to the security and the convenience of the process. They already had a fancy tablet, where I had to provide my signature digitally.

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Yes, here in Switzerland all identity photos are taken in booths at the passport office, which has the advantage that any photo they take is, by definition, compliant with their requirements regarding angle, facial expression, etc.

It's the same in Romania.

Same in Norway. It has been like this for a number of years already.

Somewhat funny story: I and my wife renewed our passports this year and we both look a lot nicer:

10 years ago the requirement that we should not smile was enforced so strict and hamfistedly that I looked like a mugshot somewhat like the doom guy and my beautiful wife looked old and sad. I remember it taking a while before they thought I looked angry enough 10 years ago.

This year they only required that we didn't actually smile so the process was a lot quicker, police will probably not harass me on border crossings and my wife doesn't look like she is 20 years older ;-)

I wonder... could you use a mugshot?

I think you could except they are often not on a white or almost white background (a US requirement.)

In the US I had this done in the post office by an on-premise photographer. It's also where I picked up the form to fill out to get a passport in the first place, and where I was going to mail it from anyways, so it's not like the US doesn't have one-stop-shops for this.

Same in Sweden, the passport/ID applications are done in an all-in-one booth that takes your photo, reads your fingerprint, and digitizes your signature.

The downside to this is that as an expat, the only way to renew a passport is to fly across the country to visit the embassy in person. And Swedish passports only last 5 years.

> Luckily they could refer me to a local shop nearby which was open at that time

Not telling that is the case but happens all the time in India. The local shop and this guy have a profit sharing deal :-)

I suspect the fact that we do it this way in the US may be a small part of why DMV lines are legendary - that being said, Germany may be able to implement it better.

DMV lines were at least as bad, probably worse before the days of digital photography....

Mixed feelings on this. On the one hand, I prefer not having to spend an extra hour to find a photo place each time I need new documents. On the other hand, I have a good photo on my documents :)

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