octopus1980

Gentlemen, just got my passport

What I noticed, it is of much poorer quality when comparing to my British passport. The original photo I sent was awesome! And they made it look terrible, it looks bleached, and it is not even aligned to the center.

Also the machine readable zone is at slight angle and the left side of it, it is right at the edge of the paper, which makes me question whether it is readable or scannable at all.

Is this quality normal/standard, or did I just receive defective piece that should be replaced?

Pulaski

Never mind that! What we're all dying to know is, how many pages does it have?

octopus1980

just enough pages

lansbury

Why don't you send it back and tell them. Sure they would be delighted to receive your critique.

octopus1980

I honestly do not care about the quality as long as it is good for travel. My only concern was the photo may not resemble my face accurately due to their poor printing, and the MRZ being off.

If you don't think it is a problem, then I am happy I don't have to take any action :-) I just don't want to get stuck on an airport in a foreign country.

Pulaski

My US passport has a distorted version of the picture I sent them, wider and squashed as best I remember. I have used it without question or delay at the immigration desk to fly to the UK and back.

octopus1980

Thanks, then everything is good!

Although, you flew US <-> UK , I wonder someone got any alike issue in Russia, China, etc.

jkeller

My first adult passport had my place of birth misspelled. I used it half a dozen times over it's 10 year validity and no customs agent ever said a word.

octopus1980

US government is preaching water, but drinking wine. Other countries are demanded to have perfect travel documents, while Americans are given less perfect and less secure ones, in my opinion. Sorry for the rant, I know my opinion does not matter anyways

MidAtlantic

What's your obsession with passports? You started by going on and on about how many pages, asking questions that it was impossible for anyone to answer. Now that you have one you are still not satisfied and not even willing to tell us how many pages it has!

Pulaski

I am not sure in what way you think it is "less secure" about a new US passport?

The key to modern passport security is the machine readability and the chip. I believe that in less than 20 years physical passports will become optional (only truely needed by those visiting the remote backwaters of third world countries), with most people taking the option of a "passport app" on their phone which links real-time to a file of their personal details and visas, probably a variety of identifying pictures and other information, and most likely linked to all manner of other data harvested from your credit file, farcebook, linkedin, etc. The chip in physical passports will contain exactly the same data and the IP address of your passport file.

octopus1980

No obsession, just sticking to the thread. It is possible that I am way too focused on detail and finding problems where most people simply won't.

I think you may be right. That's how I see it too, and it is scary.

Pulaski

Why? What do you have to hide?

I used to worry about the government snooping through my personal data, then I realized my life is rather boring so it doesn't matter what the government is looking for, they won't find it.

octopus1980

This is clearly for another topic. But government snooping is not as innocent as you may think. In short, lets pretend good guys are in power today. No need to worry right. Tomorrow bad guys take over and they have the entire system already set up.

Asking "What do you have to hide?" is very dangerous. If you say you don't care about privacy, because you have nothing to hide that basically equals to saying you don't care about free speech, because you have nothing to say.

We may start another thread for this :-)

mrken30

Passports will become obsolete when the populations DNA is all held on record and everyone is chipped. Chips have been trialed in animals for years, only a matter of time for them to become FDA approved.