While approaching the Canadian-American border, a man realized that he had forgotten his passport. Instead of returning for the document, he decided to take a chance and use a scanned copy he had on an iPad 2, apparently succeeding.
According to the
Winnipeg Free Press, 33-year-old Martin Reisch used a digital copy of his passport he had on his iPad to pass the border without much difficulty.
He claimed that the passport copy from the iPad and his driver’s license were more than enough for the border officer to grant him access without much fuss. Furthermore, he says that he used the same credentials to return to Canada later.
“I think a good part of it had to do with the fact that it was the holidays and I seem like a nice-enough person,” Reisch said.
In normal circumstances a driver’s license is not enough to pass the American border, but if the man’s version is correct, there seem to be some exceptions from this rule.
Upon hearing Reisch’s story, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released an official statement, denying that a simple picture on an iPad was more than enough for someone to enter the territory of the United States.
“The assertion that a traveler was admitted into the U.S. using solely a scanned image of his passport on an iPad is categorically false. In this case, the individual had both a driver's license and birth certificate, which the CBP officer used to determine identity and citizenship in order to admit the traveler into the country,” reads the CBP
statement.
They state that scanned or digital images of documents are not accepted forms of identification and if the traveler cannot present valid documents, border officers must determine the citizenship and the identity using other methods or deny him entry.
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