On the topic of the article, every hotel outside the US I've used has asked for my passport; I didn't know that a copy of the details exposed weaknesses on the electronic side.
Considering the Date of Birth and Date of Expiry are necessarily limited in entropy, one should take care in protecting their Document Number as it is the greatest source of entropy for the derived "password key".
> Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Which is functionally the same as
> slavery or involuntary servitude, as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Every hotel in the US and any other country has asked for my passport (and credit card), but I'm not American.
The textual information on the page of my passport is basically public knowledge, like a phone number or an american social security number. It's rare that a hotel takes the passport out of sight (and potentially scan the chip), but a photocopy is fairly frequent.
As a US resident, I have often been asked for a drivers license in the US and it was actually an issue at one point when I had lost it though I was able to work around with some difficulty. I suspect the details were some combination of local/state/and hotel policy.
I have had issues with US hotels accept US passports and fought with one over it.
Generally speaking, hotels in the US do seem to want government ID. Don't really know the requirement in general. This was a fairly low-rent chain that I was only using because last minute. I expect if it had been one of my major loyalty chains, a manager would have fixed things pretty quickly.
ADDED: Normally I travel with a passport as well but, as I say, this was a last moment short trip so I didn't throw in all my travel pouches.
Many countries also have mandatory registration of foreign visitors that hotels do automatically so they know the drill.