Last month a man from Bucharest noticed his driving license expired and went to the police to renew it. But officials refused to accept his application because the picture from his old ID card did not match reality: the man had grown a beard.

Your beard or your driving license

The man was sent away without a new license. Police said he either had to shave to match the picture on file, or have a new ID made. According to the police, some men even shave their beard on the spot, with a razor provided by the institution.

But what happens if you get bored of the beard after a few months? Or if you only have it temporarily for health or religious reasons? Or if you decide to dye your hair or grow long hair?

But such questions will not receive answers from the police, who are there to execute orders, not discuss them. In the case above, the man sought help from the Bucharest city officials and the country’s ombudsman, but received the same reply from both:

“...such requests cannot be processed because your physiognomy does not match the photo on your ID and…a change of the identity document is needed. "

Does a beard change your face?

It is not the first time this question has come up. It seems, however, that the Romanian authorities are the first ones to respond to it in this way.

The US government, famous for its draconic security control, especially after 9/11, nevertheless says that growing a beard or dying ones hair “would not constitute a significant change” that requires a new ID picture.

But in Romania, a country that should be far less paranoid about security, one must get a new ID photo “when the photograph on the identity card no longer corresponds with the physiognomy of the holder.”

Conform or reform?

The issue can have two solutions: the traditional one – conform to the norm, even if it is absurd, or keep fighting until the end – possibly the European Court of Human Rights.

In the aforementioned case, the man tried to confront the system for a while, considering that Romanian authorities were infringing on his fundamental rights by imposing conditions related to his physical appearance in order to release a document.

According to him, the beard did not change his physical appearance to the extent that changing the ID became necessarily, especially when the ID was made only two years before. But after nearly a month of petitions and complaints, he quit the fight and shaved his beard.

Is that a colander on your head?

This shouldn’t be necessary today. Facial recognition technology is so advanced that it can scan the human face and accurately identify people (even identical twins) based on biometrics - such as looking at the iris. According to one source, the Romanian police can access such technology.

In Austria, a man even won the right to wear a colander on his head for his ID photo, citing religious reasons. Yet even today, even with all the technology available, a person’s facial hair is still enough to throw off Romanian authorities.