
Germany bans digital doppelganger passport photos - aloukissas
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-tech-morphing/germany-bans-digital-doppelganger-passport-photos-idUSKBN23A1YM
======
ceejayoz
Surely manipulating the photo beyond tweaking exposure, white balance, etc.
was _already_ banned?

It sounds like they're just taking steps to make it harder to do the already-
banned thing. Hell, you can't even fix red-eye in the US:

[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-
app...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/how-
apply/photos.html)

> Can I remove red-eye from my photo? No, you can not digitally alter a photo
> to remove red eye. You will have to submit a new photo without red eye.

~~~
kleiba
That's why they will now require you to have your photo taken either at a
passport office or at a photographer's. Although the wording in the article is
not quite precise on the latter part.

~~~
CleanCoder
I thought they always required a professionally taken photo? In Canada you
need to go to a photographer (lots of malls and general stores have one) to
take your photos and then stamp and sign them at the back making them eligible
for passport submission.

~~~
gumby
German passport photos (until now) could be taken by those photo machines that
are all over the place. Australia requires a printed photo that’s most easily
taken at a shop but doesn’t have to be.

Disclaimers: it’s been 6 years and 2 years since I’ve had to do this.

~~~
hnarn
Weird. In Sweden its required to have your picture taken by a machine at the
police office where you apply for the passport.

~~~
emilfihlman
In Finland you can submit your own photo through the internet. All
applications are verified by the police so I don't see the issue.

~~~
msl
No you can't. Only a licensed photography studio can do it [1]. You can,
however, submit a paper photograph taken by anyone.

[1]
[https://www.poliisi.fi/passport/passport_photo_instructions](https://www.poliisi.fi/passport/passport_photo_instructions)

~~~
tincholio
You can register as a photographer very easily. I've been doing my own pics
for years now.

~~~
emilfihlman
You don't even need to register as a photographer (to submit other people's
photos). You can do it as an individual just fine, as the submission page
directly mentions.

------
_ph_
The funny thing is, as I recently had to renew my ID card, I would have been
happy, if the local authorities had offered to take my picture. They rejected
the picture I brought, because they claimed my head was angled not straight
ahead enough and I had to run out to find someone to take a picture of me.
Luckily they could refer me to a local shop nearby which was open at that
time, but considering the low quality of those ID photos, having a web cam in
the office would be an obvious and easy improvement both to the security and
the convenience of the process. They already had a fancy tablet, where I had
to provide my signature digitally.

~~~
microtherion
Yes, here in Switzerland all identity photos are taken in booths at the
passport office, which has the advantage that any photo they take is, by
definition, compliant with their requirements regarding angle, facial
expression, etc.

~~~
eitland
Same in Norway. It has been like this for a number of years already.

Somewhat funny story: I and my wife renewed our passports this year and we
both look a lot nicer:

10 years ago the requirement that we should not smile was enforced so strict
and hamfistedly that I looked like a mugshot somewhat like the doom guy and my
beautiful wife looked old and sad. I remember it taking a while before they
thought I looked angry enough 10 years ago.

This year they only required that we didn't actually smile so the process was
a lot quicker, police will probably not harass me on border crossings and my
wife doesn't look like she is 20 years older ;-)

~~~
PopeDotNinja
I wonder... could you use a mugshot?

~~~
1123581321
I think you could except they are often not on a white or almost white
background (a US requirement.)

------
josch
This ban probably comes as a response to this activist project by the Peng!
collective: [https://pen.gg/campaign/mask-id-2/](https://pen.gg/campaign/mask-
id-2/) where they used morphed portraits for passports.

~~~
doe88
So if I understand correctly, the kind of attack enabled by this manipulation
is to provide a way for non-passport holders to pass custom controls by using
the legitimate passport of the person they morphed their picture with. Is
there any other useful kind of attack possible with this scheme?

~~~
CaptainZapp
Sure, you go through one of the automated gates, pretty common in most
European airports now.

Face recognition gives the green light, since (part of) the picture is a
perfect match.

A human may not be fooled, automated face recognition may.

~~~
LegitShady
from the article:

>Such manipulation of photos is typically invisible to the human eye, the
researchers found.

I think its more like attacking a machine learning model - the difference in
the photos may not be apparent at all, so a human reviewer might not catch
something.

------
ChuckMcM
Nice hack, now wondering if you can wear the 'Angelina Jolie' glasses frame[1]
for your picture.

Funny story, when my passport was stolen in London I had to go to the US
Embassy there to get a replacement, I brought a picture that I got in the tube
station from a "passport photo machine". The embassy rejected it, requiring
instead that I go to a specific photographer who was located about 2 blocks
away. That guy charged me 20 pounds sterling for two black and white photos.

My wife kept that one after it had expired because in the photo I have a
smoldering look of disgust :-)

[1] [https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507542/facial-
recogniti...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/11/3/13507542/facial-recognition-
glasses-trick-impersonate-fool)

~~~
kube-system
In the US you can’t wear glasses at all for your passport photo, even if you
always wear glasses.

~~~
astura
This is really really new, I've owned three passports (including my current
one) where I'm wearing glasses.

Apparently it's cause people can't figure out how to take a photo with glasses
properly.

[https://travel.state.gov/content/travel_old/en/news/no-
glass...](https://travel.state.gov/content/travel_old/en/news/no-glasses-
nov-1st.html)

~~~
kube-system
I wouldn't say it's really _that_ new, assuming an even distribution of
passports over time, close to 40% of active US passports probably fall under
those rules.

~~~
tallanvor
That would still mean 60% of passport holders will be surprised by this
change. I hadn't heard of it, and I'll need to renew my passport in a little
over a year.

------
comnetxr
Is this AI generated text? It doesn't provide any context a normal human would
want. The attempt at providing context feels exactly like an AI searched a
database of summaries of research for something related.

~~~
panopticon
Reuters and Axios tend to have very... terse articles. Some being no more than
a sentence or two.

------
tekknolagi
This is kind of weird. I had my German ID (not passport photo, but visa ID &
student ID) photo taken at an official photographer's, and he spent a good
deal of time photoshopping my face to make me look more attractive. This is
the only country I've ever seen this done. They certainly don't do this in the
US...

------
MattGaiser
Is there any reason in a digital camera age to not have the passport office
agent take the photo?

~~~
walterbell
Consumer aesthetic preference. Enabling a revenue stream for small business.
Reducing burden on already-overloaded passport office. Enabling remote
applications for passports, e.g. there is not a passport office in every city
of a large country.

~~~
_ph_
The funny thing is, the local zoo had no problem taking your picture and
printing it onto a all-year ticket 15 years ago, but I found it quite annoying
that you are required to bring your own photo when applying for a new
passport. As I went through renewing my passport some weeks ago, having your
picture taken with a webcam in the office would ad no complication to the
process - any aesthetic value is lost by the time it is on the passport
anyway.

~~~
sokoloff
The local zoo is rightly substantially less concerned about forgeries than the
State Department.

~~~
FabHK
And yet, the local zoo took the picture themselves in a process under their
control, while the passport office doesn’t, but accepts pictures from external
sources. That’s the point.

~~~
jkaplowitz
Professional photographers don't have a significant fraction of their business
coming from zoo photos. They do for passport photos. They therefore complained
about losing the latter business but not the former.

------
walterbell
_> The government on Wednesday backed a law requiring people to either have
their photo taken at a passport office or, if they use a photographer, have it
submitted in digital form over a secure connection_

Is there already a list of approved photographers who would submit directly,
i.e. effectively "signing" the digital photo bitstream? What would be the
qualification process for such a photographer? Who is liable if the
photographer's computer is hacked and the image tampered prior to uploading?

------
ab_testing
Can I see any samples of digital doppelganger photos. The one on the website
does not like a photo of 2 separate people.

~~~
ceejayoz
Well, that's the point.

> Such manipulation of photos is typically invisible to the human eye, the
> researchers found.

(The picture in the article is just a file photo of a passport, though. Not an
example of the manipulation.)

~~~
gruez
Is this some sort of adversarial image? Wouldn't it only work on specific
neural networks?

~~~
apetresc
It works on the neural networks inside people's skulls. The point is a
passport control officer would wave either of two distinct people through
based on the same photo.

~~~
k1t
This isn't related to fooling humans. There is no passport control officer.

Immigration use automated barriers and facial recognition to match the person
to the digital photo on the passport chip.

The trick in the article causes the facial recognition algorithm to accept two
different people for the same passport.

~~~
iso1631
About a decade ago we had iris scanning at London Heathrow. You had to
register upfront, and the idea was only frequent flyers would be registered,
but it was great, the lines were short - you didn't even need to get your
passport out.

It started getting a bit silly towards the end as unregistered people started
clogging up the queues, but it was far faster than the "automatic passport
scanning" stuff.

Surely that was harder to forge than a passport photo. I assume the company in
charge didn't offer enough bribes to the politicians making the decision.

------
refurb
It fascinating seeing the different passport requirements by country.

It's a well known fact that intelligence agencies will use other countries
passports as cover. Israel is well known for this. Which countries would you
use? Well, a US passport isn't going to be a good cover in many countries, so
it's often more neutral countries like Canada, Australia, Sweden.

Canada has tightened up their passport requires a few times after a rash of
stolen and forged Canadian passports.

Smaller countries with less security issues have much more lax passport
requirements. A friend was able to get a Vietnamese passport through her mom.
She brought original birth certificates, etc. They were fine with just
photocopies (that could obviously be changed).

------
leoh
> pictures of two people are digitally combined, making it possible to assign
> multiple identities to a single document

Wild, I wonder how often this has happened.

------
ericol
I had to renew my German passport last year.

I live in Buenos Aires (I'm from Argentina) and the embassy refers you to a
couple of places where you can get your photo taken.

I went to the place that was close to a bus stop in the bus line I was using
to get to the embassy.

It was a rather badly lit shop; I asked for them to take me a photo for the
passport, and they did it with a rather lousy cellphone, and printed it right
away in one of those auto machines that you can see everywhere you can print
digital photos. They guy cut it with scissors.

Guess it goes without saying that it was of very bad quality; and yes, that is
the picture that is now in my passport.

I do not need to alter it in any way, it's so bad probably my brother could
enter Europe with it.

------
jdiez17
> The government on Wednesday backed a law requiring people to either have
> their photo taken at a passport office or, if they use a photographer, have
> it submitted in digital form over a secure connection

So photographers are still able to submit doctored photos. If they really want
to stop this practice, the government must have full ownership over the chain
of custody of these pictures (including hardware and software), OR be able to
detect morphed pictures that are submitted by anyone.

In my opinion neither of these strategies will be implemented in practice, so
this new law seems pretty pointless.

~~~
simias
If a photographer is caught sending doctored photos (easy to detect after the
fact, especially if the photographer does many of these manipulations) they'll
be in deep legal trouble.

As often, why bother with an overcomplicated technical solution when a social
one will do the trick just fine? Oh, who am I kidding, let's just use the
blockchain instead!

~~~
jdiez17
The same deep legal trouble applies to individuals sending manipulated photos,
though.

And if you are a criminal who wants to obtain a fake passport, it's probably
not out of your reach to use social engineering to convince your photographer
to plug a USB stick with malware into their computer.

It does raise the bar of difficulty slightly, but it also gives criminals
plausible deniability.

~~~
hef19898
I once needed a new ID card as I lost my old one and the passport wasn't valid
anymore. I also moved to a new city just before.

In order to get a new ID card, usually you hand in your old one, all I needed
was a copy of my birth certificate and the registration in tje new city. The
latter was easy, as in Germany registration and passports / IDs are done by
the same office. The latter one was 10 Euro in stamps, 3 days later I had the
copy in my postbox. Out of experience, your name on the box is enough.

So, theoretically you could get a new ID, with your picture and prints, but a
different name, by ordering a birth certificate and have it mailed to you. No
idea what kind of checks where built in in the background, but I hadn't the
impression there were a lot. Germany, like 8 years ago.

Wouldn't work on scale, so. And way to risky for a one-off.

------
zitterbewegung
Thats not the only way you can fool facial recognition systems. You can get
clear glasses that when put on will fool the system into seeing a different
face.

See [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-
ccs16.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sbhagava/papers/face-rec-ccs16.pdf)

------
allendoerfer
I have recently renewed my passport in Germany and took the photo at the
passport office. The photo was printed out by a machine next to the entrance
from which I carried it up two stairs to the clerk. While the new law was not
in place at that time yet, it would have been trivial for me or any person
going to the lengths of combining faces in a photo to adjust the layout of my
own print to the one done by the machine and add its logo to it.

~~~
germanier
That's how it was done now for a long time. The new machines send the picture
electronically to the clerk and don't print them anymore.

------
kleiba
Awesome.

Until now, you could take your passport photo conveniently at home for next to
nothing. I'm sure they will introduce exorbitant fees for a simple picture
now.

------
junon
I wonder how this will affect the subway station photo booths.

For those that don't know, at least in Berlin (possibly other places) many
U-Bahn (Subway) stations have photo booths for passport photos. They're
apparently verifiable by the government, but I've never really understood how.

This sounds like those booths will no longer work. Anyone have any more info?

------
supernova87a
Eh, going to all the trouble of manipulating the photo and getting around
Germany's laws are a waste of time.

All you do is go to Belgium, and bribe a local mayor, where they have the
ridiculous system of having _local_ administration and control over the
issuing (and mysterious "loss") of passports. Belgian passports are rife with
fraud.

~~~
the_svd_doctor
Yes they are issued by the cities (so pictures and fingerprints are taken
there) but are of course created by the interior ministry, not by the cities
themselves as far as I know. Same for the national IDs.

Are there particular evidence of fraud ? It's the second time I see this
comment recently. Belgium has the Registre National where everything is
centrally stored (including passport data, you can see all passports and IDs
issued in your name there for instance), it's not totally a city-by-city
thing.

------
sly010
Some other European countries already require in-office photography. Hungary
is pretty strict about this, most Hungarian embassies will take your photo and
fingerprint to issue you a tourist visa. They just use what looks like a
webcam.

------
soufron
This is the paradox of Solow pushed to the next level. You see digital stuff
everyhwere, except in the balance sheet... because everytime you use digital
technologies to simplify something, it ends up complexifying something else :D

------
eqtn
In Indian passport offices, we cannot bring the photos instead there is dslr
hooked to the computer to take photos when i went to take passport in 2010.

------
_jal
Are there any examples of "doppelganger" photos online? Now I'm curious about
what Germany is using to do the matching.

------
virtualritz
I have an appointment to get a new (German) passport next Week. I'll be
curious if this will be in effect/applied by then.

------
Luc
When I had my passport picture taken, it was in a booth with software that
assured the resulting image conformed to all the rules.

------
thadk
Today in eigenvectors...

------
Koshkin
The whole paper passport thing is just ridiculous in the age of ubiquitous
digital communications and photography. Any official requiring your picture
could take it and send it to an AI for identification right on the spot.

~~~
cygx
There's currently no national database storing pictures of all German citizen,
and I for one would oppose its creation.

~~~
Koshkin
Why would you oppose the database of all citizens to also having pictures in
it?

~~~
wasmitnetzen
There is also no single database of all German citizens. Privacy is very
important in Germany.

~~~
germanier
There is since 2007, at the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern.

In addition, many decentral databases (such as local registration databases)
can be comprehensively and automatically queried by many individual
authorities.

------
elchin
German passports have fingerprint info stored in them - won't that prevent
someone else from being able to use the passport? I would hope they check
fingerprints at the border.

~~~
junon
I'm an American expat in Germany. I've never had my fingerprints checked,
neither in the US not at any country borders. Could be a privilege stemming
from US/EU diplomacy but I've never heard of them checking anyone else's
fingerprints.

~~~
the_svd_doctor
For foreigners entering the US fingerprints are taken in ~100% of the cases at
airports. Land borders seem to be an exception.

For the EU it's very rare as far as I know, both for EU citizens or
foreigners.

~~~
vkou
> For foreigners entering the US fingerprints are taken in ~100% of the cases
> at airports.

Not for Canadians - unless this recently changed, fingerprints are not taken
for a Canadian flying in from Canada, or from Mexico.

~~~
the_svd_doctor
Interesting. I'm a student from Europe. All of my international friends have
the same experience. But Canadian have a very special relationship with the US
(like few/no visas...) so I guess I'm not surprised.

