Passports Or Travel Cards

[joggerjayne]

Since hardly anyone ever stamps your passport nowadays, wouldn't it be better to issue some sort of travel card instead?

Like a driving licence.

[shoota]

If you get banned you wouldn't be able to go on the piste......

[Hopkirk]

What, like an ID card?

Someone should suggest that to the government.

Oh, hang on....

[ichkeria]

My passport is always stamped - depends where you go perhaps.

[joggerjayne]

Not really like an ID card.

You'd only need to carry it when you travelled abroad.

We no longer need ID cards when so many people have a GPS enabled smart phone.

There is a continual record of where you are, where you have been, whom you've phoned, who you were with (if they have a smart phone too), whom you've texted or messages, what you wrote, which shops you go in, how fast you drive, etc etc.

And, as we now know, Governments do access these records.

Frankly, I don't know why we have speed cameras any more. If anyone is in a car, with a GPS enabled smart phone, breaking the speed limit, the Police could just send NIPs to the phone owner's address.

[ummmm]

I haven't got a smart phone.

[coccinelle]

I use my identity card (which is free) to travel round Europe, but need a passport (which isn't free but cheaper than a UK passport) when travelling elsewhere and it always gets stamped.

[jno]

You used to be able to get cheap visitor's passports - until 1995, I thought it ended much earlier than that

http://www.wanderlust.co.uk/magazine/articles/destinations/a-short-history-of-passports?page=all

[netibiza]

yes on mainland Europe we can use our ID cards for the borders, but I always take my passaport.

[netibiza]

jno I escaped England on one of those passports as a certain someone had taken my passport so I tottered off to the local p.o. and got one.

[jno]

I suppose you could have a special "Permitted to Enter Brighton for One Day" stamp.

[Prudie]

Crikey are smartphones that smart? I have the GPS switched off anyway.
What's the point of just a card instead? You're not thinking it would be cheaper are you!

[jno]

ah, an international fugitive, neti?

[netibiza]

You'd think I was jno, when I then issued with a proper passport a year later, and was asked why I had 3 passports (the lost one, the P:O: one and the nbew one) well I asai it's all in the same name, they shouldn't have issued them, but I did explain.

[joggerjayne]

Yes, smart phones are that smart.

There was a bit of a hoo haa about it when it was discovered how much info is stored.

Also, if you back up your data with The Cloud (handy if you lose your device!), each time you take a photo, a big computer (fluffily named "The Cloud") stores a copy of the photo, and the time and location where you took it. Yu can't even go to the loo without a record being made of which loo it was, what time you went, and how long you spent on it. And people were really worried about ID cards?

I'd prefer a card of some sort instead of my passport. Instead of old fashioned stamps, your travel record would be stored electronically, with a chip, or whatever.

[Hopkirk]

I don't have a smart phone either, and probably never will.

[joggerjayne]

Well I hardly ever use my iPhone. I really don't need the function. My day to day mobile is a small, light Nokia.

[grasscarp]

My passport is nearly always stamped and is also the place where my visas are printed. I even had to use it earlier this year in the Cyprus town of Nicosia to go into the Turkish part.

[grasscarp]

Also I dont have an iphone but wouldnt be without my ipod touch.

[billywhizz]

Two things. Firstly the only guarantee anyone can give you with a smartphone or any other piece of equipment is that, one day, it will fail. You don't want that to be at a border. The reason why people still need a passport document is that, if you get a visa for, eg. China, you have to have it stuck in the pages. Not all the world or everyone in it is technically savvy or enabled.