I put this under technology, but its not very much high tech. Didn't know where else to place it.
From time to time people ask about carry copies of documents or the originals or ......
You realize that in much of Europe that it is the law to carry your passport. In twenty years of back and forth a lot to Europe I have only had my passport requested once other than a border checkpoint or when boarding a flight. And the one time, maybe the soldier would have been happy with a copy .... rather not find out though.
But the real issue is, yes, its a good idea to have backup copies, but what to do with them? Now some of you will maybe like this idea, others might see me nutty. I use to keep a paper copy in the liner of my carry-on (just put it in oneday and forgot about it for years and years) and another copy on my cell phone.
But I got to thinking about five years ago, what if they find my body on an Albanian sidewalk beaten to death by a RS Back Door bag and with a selfie-stick through my heart and with pockets picked clean? Who is going to unlock my phone and hunt down the files to know where to ship the body? Yes, I go to some sketchy places so I bought a shiny gold dog tag and had it engraved with my name and passport number and an emergency contact. Of course, shiny gold was probably not a good idea.
This year i made a pdf with all the documents I could imagine; passport, global entry card, insurance card, covid vaccine cards and put them in a pdf along with medical information, prescriptions and emergency contacts. I put the pdf in a folder on the cloud. The same folder has all my reservations and flights for the current trip in it. Then I made a QR code and printed it on a business card with my name, address, passport number, blood type (yes, sketchy places I go) and put that in my money clip. Probably wouldn't be the end of the world if it fell into the wrong hand, still not a perfect solution.
Today I purchased a new dog tag. Same information on the front as before, but on the back is the QR code to all the information in the cloud folder. I will get rid of the money clip card. I figure that since dog tags are sort of universal ID tags, the people at the morgue will look at it. By linking to a folder and not to a particular file, I can change the content of the folder for each trip and the QR code stays good.,
Now, if you are worried that the same woman that did you in will use the information to stay in your reservation in Malta, then there are a few services available that, for a fee, will provide you with the dog tag and a QR code to their office which presumably will filter who gets to see the information,
I like the QR code idea, because if I leave my phone on the corner of the bar (as I have a tendency to do) and someone walks off with it I can borrow any phone and scan the QR code hanging around my neck and have access to the information for my flight home or important phone contacts along the way. And by using my own cloud account the service is free. The biggest flaw is in 7 years I will have to replace it when my passport number changes, but I like the number printed on the tag as its a quick identification that I am a US citizen, something the Taliban ambulance driver will want to know.