Germans must now have the “most neutral facial expression possible” in passport photos. From the Associated Press:
Facial recognition systems match key features on the holder’s face and work best when the face has a neutral expression with the mouth closed.
“A broad smile, however nice it may be, is therefore unacceptable,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.
Link (Thanks, Gabe Adiv!)
UPDATE: Justin Slootsky informs us that Canadians aren’t allowed to smile in their passport photos either. Link
UPDATE: Jamie McCarthy writes:
It looks like Germany’s not alone in demanding unsmiling passport
photos. The UK [1] and Canada [2] have nixed the smile, and
according to a Boing Boing story from last year, so has the US [3].But I’m not sure whether the US really has banned the smile. The
State Department’s website says “the subject may be either smiling
or not” [4], and, in a brochure from 1998 that’s still online,
“encourages photographs where the applicant is relaxed and smiling.” [5]At least in the case of the UK, the unsmiling finger was pointed at
the International Civil Aviation Organisation — but the ICAO, in
its guide to Biometric Data Interchange Formats, doesn’t ban the
smile, it taxonomizes it. [6, PDF]