>> all Americans were out of a sudden required by the Brazilian authorities to get pictures taken at the Brazilian customs
I'm curious why this would be such a hassle. I work in China right now and every time I go through customs, there's a little web cam there that takes a photo of me while the customs officer looks at my passport and stamps it. I think both foreigners and citizens experience it. Adds no time to the process at all. I even see my photo on the computer screen if the screen is angled right.
Unless Brazil simply doesn't have the ability to set up this kind of tech....
1. In China the system is set-up for that. The little web-cam and the system are integrated with a push of a button, and the process is very quick. In Brazil they didn't have anything. They were taking pictures with off-the-shelf digital cameras, and I read an article saying that they did not even have a system set-up to transfer the pictures out! It was really something implemented overnight, clearly just to piss people off.
2. Sorry if I was not clear, but my point about the hassle was not much the picture itself, but the fact that Americans were singled-out and placed on a different line. This is borderline racist IMO.
Note: Brazil eliminated this stupid policy a while ago. I mentioned it just as an example.
I'm curious why this would be such a hassle. I work in China right now and every time I go through customs, there's a little web cam there that takes a photo of me while the customs officer looks at my passport and stamps it. I think both foreigners and citizens experience it. Adds no time to the process at all. I even see my photo on the computer screen if the screen is angled right.
Unless Brazil simply doesn't have the ability to set up this kind of tech....