People whose passport photos are all smiles will soon be given a reason to frown. The State Department, according to an Associated Press and Pittsburgh-Post Gazette article, has set up new guidelines for acceptable passport photos, and toothy smiles are verboten.
According to the guidelines, “The subject’s expression should be neutral (non-smiling) with both eyes open, and mouth closed. A smile with a closed jaw is allowed but is not preferred.” Apparently, smiling distorts other facial features that are used to identify travelers with the “biometrics” method used by the International Civic Aviation Organization, the United Nations agency in charge of setting international aviation safety standards. Neutral expressions are the easiest ones to make identifications from, according to the State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs.
Frankly, this is ridiculous nitpicking. Rejecting a person’s passport picture just because he or she shows a little teeth in his or her grin is the height of pointless bureaucracy. With the multitude of security measures and security worries airports and governments deal with, there are far more important things to deal with. The time spent coming up with this guideline would have been better spent developing a more time-efficient way of screening passengers or creating no-fly lists that don’t violate citizens’ rights.
Besides, why should passports have all the charm of a driver’s license? More international terrorists won’t be nailed just because they’ve got neutral facial expressions in their passport photos. Obviously, some photos shouldn’t be used. Photos with people wearing clown make-up, deliberately scrunching up or obscuring parts of their faces should obviously not be used. But there shouldn’t be a problem with smiles.
Some people smile a lot. Wouldn’t it actually be harder to identify a smiler using a picture of them completely stone-faced? Should we force people to go out and spend time and possibly money just to get the picture the State Department wants? The passport process is already long and expensive enough without forcing people to re-take their photograph because they’re smiling too much.
More effort needs to be paid to standard efforts of protecting international travel and less on frivolous, fruitless rules that just tie up the system.
