Tootfinder

Russia tightens passport rules for children in occupied Ukraine, complicating escape, activists say: https://benborges.xyz/2026/01/26/russia-tightens-passport-rules-for.html

The U.S. State Department has ordered certain public libraries nationwide
to cease processing passport applications,
-- disrupting a long-standing service that librarians say their communities have come to rely on
and that has run smoothly for years.
The agency, which regulates U.S. passports, began issuing cease and desist orders to not-for-profit libraries in late fall,
informing them they were no longer authorized to participate in the Passport Acceptance Fac…

US State Department halts passport services at nonprofit libraries
The State Department has ordered nonprofit public libraries to stop taking passport applications, cutting off a popular local service. In late fall, the agency started sending cease and desist orders, which take effect on Feb. 13. It says these libraries cannot collect and keep passport processing fees under federal rules. Librarians say the service has worked for years and residents still call every day. Members of Congress from several states pushed back in a letter to Secretary of State Marc…

Make a passport a requirement to vote. Then block the issuing of new passports. Magats in action.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/nonprofit-libraries-ordered-by-state-department-to-stop-processing-passport-a…

Beyond ludicrous!
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/feb/13/dual-nationals-denied-entry-to-uk-british-passport-border-control?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Dual nationals to be denied entry to UK from 25 February unless they have British passport
New border controls require ‘certificate of entitlement’ to attach to second nationality passport that costs £589

I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Actually Handed Over: 'I handed a US company my passport, my face, and the mathematical geometry of my skull. They cross-referenced me against credit agencies and government databases. They’ll use my documents to train their AI. And if the US government comes knocking, they’ll hand it all over — even if it’s stored in Europe, even if I’m European, and possibly without ever telling me.
...know what you’re trading.'

In order to watch an age-restricted movie my TV asked me for all the numbers in my passport.

Another one for linguistic fun:
At the big birthday party, we all got a name tag, displaying the first name, the place the person met the birthday person and the respective year. Plus color-coding for kind of relationship causing the first encounter (family, school, work, etc.). Some people have (and use) a nickname. Those had the nickname as name and the real (passport) name in brackets
1/2

F*%! #interrail and railway operators that require passport information
https://www.interrail.eu/en/ni/data-security-incident

Oh this is excellent. Can LinkedIn be officially called a honeypot now?
https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

»You scanned your European passport for a European professional network, and your data went exclusively to North American companies. Not a single EU-based subprocessor in the chain.«
Somebody “validated” his LinkedIn profile and read the fine print afterwards: https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedi

A newly expanded policy from the Trump administration could require travelers from five World Cup-qualified countries to front a bond of up to $15,000 in order to enter the United States for the tournament.
Visa bonds operate like security deposits:
a one-time payment meant to be refunded after a traveler exits the US under the terms of their visa.
The amounts generally run between $5,000 and $15,000, and are required for passport holders from certain countries to enter the…

@… I do actually happen to have my (Polish) great-grandfathers Nazi passport in a box of family memorabilia in the house.
Boy I just *loooooove* that we’re going to live through that again.
@…

RE: https://mastodon.social/@ErikJonker/116112834347138993
'Let that sink in. You scanned your European passport for a European professional network, and your data went exclusively to North American companies. Not a single EU-based subprocessor in the chain.
And look at who’s doing “Data Extraction and Analysis” — Anthropic, OpenAI, and Groqcloud.
....'

I Verified My LinkedIn Identity. Here's What I Actually Handed Over. https://thelocalstack.eu/posts/linkedin-identity-verification-privacy/

Labour government's malign inflexibility.
British schoolgirl stranded in Denmark after return flight blocked over UK border rules | Passport Office | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/mar/19/uk-schoolgirl-strande…

Another #Brexit bonus. British-born dual citizen cannot enter the UK on their non-UK passport. Unlike foreigners they cannot travel to Britain on a visa or an ETA, but they must have a UK passport. Yet lapsed UK passports may not be renewed in case of name change, particularly for women (e.g. married vs. maiden name). It's a fine mess.

New UK border rules for dual nationals are discriminatory against women, campaigners say
British women in Spain and Greece face ‘huge problems’ entering UK because of differing surname rules

Got my Lao e-visa. All this stuff is electronic now. You upload a scan of your passport and it OCRs all your data into the right fields of a form.
Scanning the shiny plastic bio page of a new US passport can be tricky, though.
I will miss the old-fashioned passport stamps. They're the only way I keep track of where the hell I've been.

Papers, please. #discord

just dislodged a memory of attending the original 2002 auction of jerry garcia's guitars, at studio 54 for some reason, & guitar maker doug irwin (who garcia willed them to) literally cackling/laughing from the back of the room when tiger went for almost a million.

Is Our Computers Learning?
"The name on your account must exactly match the name on your reservations to ensure that you receive mileage credit and other benefits."
Global Entry number matches, passport number matches, date of birth matches, but no, if there's a difference in the name, including that usually optional middle initial and/or full middle name, I'm sorry, we were too busy training LLMs to handle basic fucking database 101.

Iranian-born Soheila Sohkanvari's brilliant Leave to Remain, currently on display at the Tate Britain, has numerous real passports from various countries, with fake passport-style stamps alongside real ones.
https://kristinhjellegjerde.com/news/112/

I’ve broken my dry spell of no fire alarms at conference hotels! I was starting to think I’d never have to prioritize passport over pants in a mad dash to the stairs again!

Tories and Lib Dems criticise Starmer’s ‘spinelessness’ after U-turn on digital ID
All very silly. The proposal is still in place, it's just that a biometric passport can be used as an alternative.
Pragmatic authoritarianism that still needs opposing.

@… I carelessly think of MATE as maintained, in the sense that it looks better than GNOME 🙂
I am horribly prejudiced. I cringe at the possibility of people wrongly assuming that I use GNOME when the truth is, Ubuntu was nothing more than my passport to KDE Plasma – Kubuntu.

After being refused board on the flight two weeks ago, Hanne’s mother had to fly back to Britain without her daughter, collect her school books and a laptop and bring them to Copenhagen where she can home school.
In a further setback, officials at the Passport Office told her father they would cancel Hanne’s passport application made weeks ago because they now knew Hanne was overseas. She would have to start again with an application from outside the country.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/mar/19/uk-schoolgirl-stranded-denmark-dual-national-rules?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The House of Representatives narrowly passed the SAVE America Act on Wednesday, but it faces a tough sell in the Senate.
The House approved the measure on Wednesday by a vote of 218-213, with one Democrat voting in favor of the proposed law
that would require voters to provide a birth certificate or passport to prove their citizenship status when registering to vote and produce a valid photo ID to vote.
Democrats oppose the measure, which Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer,…

House passes SAVE Act to require voters to show ID - UPI.com
The House of Representatives narrowly passed the SAVE America Act on Wednesday, but it faces a tough sell in the Senate.

Hanne is the third child the Guardian knows of who has been refused board on a flight back to the UK since new rules came into force on 25 February requiring British dual nationals to present a British passport, new or expired, or a certificate of entitlement costing £589 in order to check in for a flight, ferry or train journey to Britain.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/mar/19/uk-schoolgirl-stranded-denmark-dual-national-rules?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other