Recently traveled abroad and was shocked at how dystopian moving through borders is anymore. Scans after scans of passports, fingerprinting, face scans, questions about intentions for visiting, paperwork, cameras throughout airports that are surely doing untold amounts of biometric analysis with some bullshit AI…in some of these places you get laughed at if you ask about opting out. It almost isn’t worth it.
Seconded. I was just traveling to Japan from the States. While it was more or less painless, it was pretty invasive.
What are they doing these days that is invasive (I have been wanting to go back to visit friends)?
The only time I have visited Japan was back in 2012 and all I remember was just waiting in a line and handing over my passport to a customs/foreign visitors person. I also might have had a paper slip with my dates of arrival and departure, that I wasn’t bringing in more than $9999.99 in cash, and the address I was officially planning to be staying for the bulk of the time there (and name of my friend that was already living there on work visa). I don’t remember ever being stopped to check my bags or answer addition questions. Though I might have just been lucky to have not been picked for additional checks.
In addition to all that you get funneled through a thermal camera section for quarantine reasons, and then you have to stop at a machine where they simultaneously scan your passport, you put all your fingers on a reader and you look into the camera (without glasses) for biometric scanning. After that you go through passport and customs.
None of this was optional and everyone had to go through it (at least for foreigners).
I went to Japan earlier this year. Filled the travel related paperwork online in advance, and at the border they took fingerprints, compared face to passport (which I assume included a photo) and that was it. Not any different from any other developed country.