On Sat, May 27, 2006 at 04:04:33PM +0200, Moritz Muehlenhoff wrote: > > That being said I (personally) already decided not to sign people that > > showed > > me something that was *not* a passport and noted that in my KSP paper page > > through it. Unfortunately, I'm not confindent in my ability to disntiguish > > forgeries so that means that people: > > > > - showing their country's ID card > > That's idiocy. The German identity card is an officially issued > authentication device and substitutes a passport. (Which is true for the > whole European Union, so you should know). In fact the identity card > (despite the name written on it and the pages holding visa stamps) is > almost identical to the passport. (With the exception of very new passports > containing additional biometric features.)
That is not idiocy. The Spanish identity card is also officially issued [0]. Heck, the new ones now even come with a crypto-chip. That doesn't mean I can expect other people to tell apart a proper Spanish identity card from a fake one [1], and that's why I take my passport to KSPs and don't use my Spanish ID. I guess I think (but might be wrong) that people might be able to trust a passport which is (somewhat) similar to *their* passport (although this is not true for all countries) than to trust an identity card of a country they are unfamiliar with [2] If the assistants to the KSP were only Spanish (or German) citizens I guess that the identity card would be OK for that KSP, as most people should now what it is expected to *look* like. For international KSPs, however, I rather present (and be shown) a passport. Regards Javier [0] You have to pay for it, BTW, just like for the passport, but I guess that does not fit Manoj's definition :-) [1] Specially since ID cards in my country have mutated throughout time and older ID cards are easier to forge than newer cards, but there might be very old ID cards that do not have an expiration date on them and are (to all effects) still valid in Spain. [2] Heck, even the notion of a "national" ID card is foreign to some countries which do not have any of that kind. How can I expect a UK or US citizen to verify and approve of the ID card of a foreign country? (if they are not familiar with those ID cards, that is)
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