I could have applied by mail for my first Canadian passport. But I figured that it worth the heavily-detoured trip into Shediac to have Service Canada double-check my work. Turns out, my paranoia was rewarded by the fact that the agent caught two errors.
One was just a brain-burp on my part. The other, though, is on Service New Brunswick.
See, to prevent counterfeiting, our drivers' licenses are watermarked (for lack of a better term) with both grey and silvery-irridescent text/patterns. Then "personalised" information (number, name, DoB, etc., etc.) is printed over that. In my case, the watermarking seemed to affect the printing of one number so that it looked very much like another. Especially given that that the numbers are printed in red instead of black.
Fortunately (and unsurprisingly), I had to supplement the application with photocopies of photo-ID. In black and white, the number in question is far more legible. Which is how the Service Canada agent caught the mistake. (Whew!)
Needless to say, as a member of the I/T tribe, I found this more than a little ironic. I kept a straight face, but I couldn't help but think (sarcastically), "Hmmmm...securing information by making it less usable and its users more error-prone: Where-oh-where have I seen this before? Oh, riiiiiiiiight..."
Scarier thing is, my British-born neighbour told me that the UK passports now require biometric data--e.g. retina scans. I can only begin to imagine how securing digital-based data with meat-based data is going to complicate things in unintended ways. (True, glaucoma and diabetes don't seem to affect retinal biometric reading too adversely. But still, I'm totally thinking about that scene from The Avengers. Of course I am. Blech.)
