What do you think happens when passport control scans your passport? The fact that the identifier is a paper document vs a digital token will make zero difference to the data that they track. It's linked to innumerable national and international databases which they will be tracking. Your privacy is basically zero when you cross borders.
That's not true. My freshly printed passport was denied by a computer at the UK border, they ran forensic checks for 2 hours while I waited in detention and then it was all good and they let me go.
No, if you don't come with a database solution, any paper or physical only solution is 100% counterfeitable, with just enough means poured into it.
Mafias all around the world will buy expensively any valid or even used identity document just for this purpose, i.e. to study it and perfect their forgery skills.
The process you witnessed is a remnant of the past, a feature of the necessary transition period, and I hope it disappears soon, because that's a giant gaping security hole.
Btw, your fingerprints are in the database, as some facial features too. That could be in addition to retinal scans and, why not, DNA features too in the future.
Thanks to all those biometric data, in case of a problem, the process will be much more reliable using the database than using old fashioned paper IDs.
Also, all these tests are very fast to perform (excepted maybe DNA tests), much quicker than the unreliable administrative cross-checks that were performed until now when there was an ID issue.
