I’m exagerating… I’m in the process of organizing a new passport. Birth certificate, proof of citizenship, residence confirmation, pictures, old passport, marriage certificate, name change certificate – and all I get for this is a new EU passport with a crappy chip that has been disparaged all over by the international community when Dutch researchers cracked it. Too bad I’ve been too lazy to follow BruceSchneier’s advice back in 2006: Renew Your Passport Now!
My father used to call it *Papierkrieg* – the Paper War.
That’s how I feel.
#Bureaucracy #Life
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I remember when Robin was getting a new passport a couple of years ago when we planned on going over to Sweden. And it was a nightmare. I was use to get a passport issues within a couple of days, but over here it took weeks to do.
Good luck with your paper work and everything 😄
– Christa 2008-01-25 10:42 UTC
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Yikes!
At the moment everything seems to be going according to plan. I get the best service from the national registry in Iceland, by the way. There, I can just write an Email asking for my birth certificate and they send me both a scanned copy immediately and a paper copy by mail. Free of charge.
The residency confirmation is about 10 minutes by foot and costs CHF 20. Thank you Switzerland.
– Alex Schroeder 2008-01-25 11:05 UTC
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I envy you. British bureaucracy is..... welll, let’s just say there’s a reason why we queue so much 😄
I’m no fan of this whole “chips with everything” approach to identity cards, passports and the like. Trust should never be placed in technology nor the people who make it. It’s far too easily cracked, too easily faked and too easily subject to breakage and error. If it has to exist at all, it should be design on Open Source principles too, but this is one time when I’d rather see a lo-tech solution. With the new passports I feel that they’re spending an awful lot of money to solve the wrong problem.
– greywulf 2008-01-25 12:10 UTC
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Alex - were you born in Iceland? Or are they just hosting your birth certificate? :p As for the implants in ID cards, passports and other possible and impossible sources, it’s becoming an obsession. And it’s silly. The reasons they give are simply not valid and I wish that the British government could leave that behind and just hand over a decent ID card. That’s all we need anyways.
– Christa 2008-01-25 14:07 UTC
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Yes, I was born in Reykjavík. Thus, forever and always, I will have to get my birth certificates from there. 😄
I think the chips are just an example of the corrupting influence of capital on politics. There’s a company that can produce chips. There’s a vague connection to “security”. People feel insecure. Thus, this company sends lobbyists to convince the government. Unfortunately for the rest of us, those that feel that we’re just fine, or that a cheap lo-tech solution would do just fine thank you, we don’t send lobbyists. We don’t even collect money to send a lobbyist because we think it’s just damn fine as-is. But the particulars of the situation will therefore always encourage change towards expensive and complicated solutions to simple problems.
And the only voice to ever argue *against* these systems don’t do it to defend our rights but to reduce the budget. Usually that means that if you vote for them, you also vote for a big baggage of crappy asocial ideology.
Sad, but I don’t have a simple solution. 🙁
– Alex Schroeder 2008-01-25 14:15 UTC
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Wow...Reykjavik...I thought you were born in Switzerland. Well, there you go. I if anyone should know that the current “home country” doesn’t always mean that it also is your native country :p
And I think that this whole thing around ID cards and the “chips” will solve itself. Who knows, we might get hit by a meteorite by tomorrow afternoon. Problem solved 😄
– Christa 2008-01-27 00:12 UTC
