Smiling disallowed in German passport photos

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]