Smiling Canadians Against The Law
from the stop-smiling! dept
On the whole, most Canadians I know are incredibly friendly people with a ready smile. It turns out, however, that quick smile is a problem for customs officials. Submitted by dorpus, is this story about new regulations in Canada for obtaining a passport that say you cannot smile in your passport photo. They'll make exceptions for a few people who recently submitted passport applications, but otherwise, wipe that smile off your face! Frowns too. Any expression that isn't "neutral" is strictly forbidden. If trained humans can't even recognize a person with a smiling face, how can we possible expect facial recognition programs to do any better?
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Silly, but legalizing the norm
In my two passport photos I have taken, I didn't smile in either because it just didn't seem...proper. This thing is going to be viewed by some guy/gal who has been sitting in a stall for 7 hours and has the right to hold up my vacation or biz trip for hours, or even not let me in. Instead of some $*it eating grin, a somber pose seemed like the right look to get them to scan you in, stamp it and get you down to baggage claim. And after a 12 hour flight, it's easier to compare the somber photo to what I look like.
Besides my personal experience, though, I have seen a lot of other people's passports from all over the world, and I can't remember one who was smiling. But I would admit these were all business people and I suppose people who are getting one just for a single vacation might smile naturally.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Silly, but legalizing the norm
however, i am canadian. :D
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Cross Eyed Susans
This is stupid ... I smile most of the time because it is my nature ... :-)
... and a smile goes a l o n g way toward making you & others around you have a better day.
Glad I'm an American and can still smile ( @ least for now )
:-)
Cheers
[ link to this | view in chronology ]