A friend of mine received her passport in the mail the other day. Pretty standard practice. Only, she didn’t pick it up herself or sign for it - the landlady did. All based on the landlady mentioning she knows my friend well and could deliver the passport to her - to save everybody some hassle. Neighbours helping neighbours and shit. My friend will not complain - because she’s happy she didn’t have to drive to the post office and make the pick up herself.

Sure, my friend trusts her landlady. The postman, I would assume, knows the landlady too. But the postman does not know what situation my friend could be in. His job is to deliver the package to a destination - and with something as high profile as this, he’d better be making sure the right person gets it. I could see situations where a parent would take away a child’s passport for whatever intra-familial issues they may be having. Most of all, with RFID being put into every piece of crap out there, how long before someone starts wising up and hijacking all the personal information that’s just lying on the passport? It could have been a credit card, fragile and expensive materials etcetera.

But my friend will not make a complaint - she’s happy she doesn’t have to drive and pick it up from the post-office herself.