The New Passport-Poor - Passports may soon disappear, but it may be more invasive....

[DGUtley]

Today, the passport’s days are rumored to be numbered. Airline executives and government officials predict that as soon as 2022, international travel will be “a smooth, tokenless process,” free of IDs or boarding cards, relying entirely on iris scans and fingerprints taken in a split second and vetted by a gigantic database of traveler information. With the rise of these biometric technologies against the backdrop of the war on terror and the resurgence of ethnic nationalism, we’re seeing walls—physical, legal, and rhetorical ones—being thrown up at every step. Physical walls have a symbolic part in the populist imagination, dividing “natives” from “others,” and beefed-up border controls, surveillance, and tracking technology create boundaries just as concrete in effect that politicians can crow about. Less noticed are the lines being drawn around people, delineations that will potentially follow them around for life.





https://getpocket.com/explore/item/t...=pocket-newtab

[FindersKeepers]

That's interesting. Covid pushed the deadline for Real ID back one year until Oct. of 2021, but if this is just around the corner, I wonder if Real ID will be dropped altogether.