I’d like to start off by saying that this particular story scares the crap out of me. Apparently, Quebec resident Martin Reisch decided to travel to the United States to deliver Christmas presents, but forgot his passport. Surely he’d be turned away and sent back home, right? Nope.
How did Reisch make his way through the US border without a passport? He had a copy of it on his trusty iPad. Since he was driving, he figured he’d give it a shot rather than just turn his car around:
After handing his iPad over to the officer, it took about six minutes to gain entrance into the country:
Reisch said:
I thought I’d at least give it a try. He took the iPad into the little border hut. He was in there a good five, six minutes. It seemed like an eternity. When he came back he took a good long pause before wishing me a Merry Christmas.
According to US law, Canadians must present original passports or enhanced driver’s licenses when trying to gain entrance. The law doesn’t include accepting copies or scans of these documents, and certainly doesn’t cover ones stored on iOS devices.
It looks like Martin Reisch got lucky and the border officer made an exception. Will presenting documentation on a mobile device be good enough in the future? Perhaps, but as it stands today, it looks like someone might lose their job.
Somebody was nice over christmas. No need to fire him.
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LikeA border agents uses his discretion, but of courses still performs due diligence by doing relevant checks, sounds fine to me, a very lucky day for guy crossing the border. But what a jackass Reisch is to then try and get some publicity about it, potentially incriminate what remains of the non-robotic border staff. Arsehole
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LikeIntelligent border guard, did the appropriate checks behind the scenes, found the passport was live and valid, the guy was obviously genuine. Correct decision, no risk whatsoever.
The guy deserves a promotion, not censure. I'd rather him than some jobsworth goon who simply follows orders, can't think beyond them and therefore never, ever actually catches a real bad guy using a novel technique.
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LikeI wouldn't expect this to happen every time but I don't think it is something that would surprise me or make me feel less secure. Anyone who travels a decent amount will have several copies of their important identification, either paper copies or digital. Think of it this way, if your passport gets stolen while you are in a foreign country how will you get on home soil to get a new one without some sort of copy? There are obvious ways to check including passport numbers, etc which I would assume they did.
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LikeWhen he got the ipad back his all his high scores had been obliterated by the customs official who has been training for the past year for this exact scenario.
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LikeHeh. If you are driving to the US or Canada, your license plate and personal info are pulled and analysed before you even GET to talk to a human. They know exactly who to expect when you get to the checkpoint and what the answers to the questions are! Heck, they prolly have pulled up your social media posts and know what you had to eat the day before.
This is not to say that an original passport should have been used, but I am saying that by the time you get to the checkpoint, they are just looking for verification of what they already know.
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LikeI regularly use a photo of my British passport on my iphone to gain entries to clubs and bars since I have been living in Australia, far too risky to carry my passport everywhere, would like to see that acceptable...This is a bit of a different circumstance though, and a bit worrying
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