Dear State Dept.: NO.

[elbales]

State Dept. wants to make it harder to get a passport

by EDWARD HASBROUCK on APRIL 22, 2011

If you don’t want it to get even harder for a U.S. citizen to get a passport — now required for travel even to Canada or Mexico — you only have until Monday to let the State Department know.

The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”

The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form.

It seems likely that only some, not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new questionnaire, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be subjected to these additional new written interrogatories. So if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all they will have to do is give you the impossible new form to complete. . . .

You can submit comments to the State Dept. online at Regulations.gov until midnight Eastern time on Monday, April 25, 2011. Go here, then click the “Submit a Comment” button at the upper right of the page. If that link doesn’t work for you, it’s probably a problem with the javascript used on the Regulations.gov website. There are alternate instructions for submitting comments by email here.

WHAAAAAAAAAT.

I commented. Also I called all my reps. This is bullshit. This is not going to make one single person safer, only represent a gross violation of privacy and, should an application be denied over this bullshit, a violation of the rights of free movement and free assembly.

OH HALE NO.
 

Comments

[rurounitriv.livejournal.com]

I don't even KNOW all my addresses since birth! Neither do a good half of my patrons at the library, I'm sure, there's a good number of them that have a different address every year or two. I don't know where most of my former supervisors are now, much less their addresses. I don't know where my mom was living one year prior to my birth. I don't even know if I was formally baptized / christened!

I'm lucky... my mom is still alive, and speaking to me, so I could probably answer these questions, once I tracked her down in freaking BRAZIL. For an orphan, someone who's lost track of their family, or someone whose parents are somehow unable to answer those questions, it would be impossible.

[elbales]

I know! It's a ridiculous burden. I doubt 95% of Americans could complete it.

[emidala.livejournal.com]

Wow. I think the Permanently Stupid Award needs to be handed out to whoever came up with that idea in the first place.

I do not think I know one person who could complete that form. Not one.

[akk]

Dear newborn child,
please videotape your mother 24/7 starting three months before you were conceived, make sure you note and recall all religious (or otherwise) practices around you at two years before conscious memory sets in, and demand of all employers in your lifetime, not only their names, but also those of the colleagues, which at some point may advice you...
(Up) Sincerely yours,
D.S. (State Department a.k.a "Dementia senilis")