Thread: Towards a Global Passport

Towards a Global Passport

January 17, 2010
by Sunil Mathur Sunil Mathur

Half the joy of visiting a foreign land is marred by the ever looming fear of losing one's passport while there. For without it one is a persona non grata. One cannot board a flight to one's own country, cannot apply for foreign exchange or even book a hotel room. Apart from this, cases of undesirable persons gaining entry to other countries on the basis of fake passports, and carrying on their nefarious activities there, are not uncommon.

To me, the way out of this dismal scenario is to carry globalization and digitization to their logical conclusion. Let all passports, in all nations of the world, be processed and issued through electronic means. Besides the holder's recent photograph and signatures, the passport should also carry other marks of identification, such as thumb impressions. It would be stored in a computerized database, and all such national or regional databases would merge into a global database accessible to the governments of all countries. Even older passports could be digitized and included in this global database.

Now if a person lost his passport while in a foreign country, all he would have to do is to approach the concerned authorities, who would readily retrieve it from the global database. The identity of the person would be verified with the help of his recorded photograph, signatures, thumb impressions, etc., and the duplicate passport then authenticated and issued to him. What a relief ! Cases of doubtful or fake passports will also be identified more readily, because such passports would not appear in the global database. Even if the person has forged a passport with some recorded name and other details, the identification marks included in the original passport will give him away.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/articl ... sport.html

I think it is true that losing a passport is a great fear. The money belts are a good idea---but I have always made sure I knew where my important identification was before boarding something taking me a long distance. Probably wearing your passport on an unbreakable chain or cord around your neck would be the only safe way.