At this time, I don't think a full passport would be useful. You'd have to get a new one even if the one you have is still valid for a long time.

More secure from the US government? A pipe dream.

I don't know why you say that. The US govt did a pretty good job
setting up the TSA, making air travel a million times more secure
for us. ^

May I interest you in a one-owner 1980 Oldsmobile in mint condition
with mostly highway miles?

That depends, would you be willing to swap it even up for this great bridge I've got?

I'll drive that car and meet you on your bridge... then we can work out deal? :)

The bridge is not in Alaska, is it? (because my Olds is in Russia, but pretty
sure you can see it from your bridge in Alaska) :D

Back to the passport issue.... when I was at the Passport Agency recently,
the clerk told me the new more secure passports probably wouldn't start
showing up until the end of 2016 at the earliest.

No, new passport designs are not required when released, instead they are rolled out as passports are replaced. The US passport is over-due for a redesign anyway.

Overdue for re-design? Re-designs cost money and increase costs for users in the main.

Wow, check out the new Canadian design. I want ours to look 10x cooler... How about a see through passport... :P

The Canadian and Norwegian passports seem to get lots of "wows" for the latest re-designs, but at what price? :D

Canada seems to change passport rules like some people change shoes. This month again another change series, as they put in new rules when applying for passports and changed how passport signatures are handled.

The ICAO has guidance for how often passports should be re-designed to make counterfeiting them a moving target. I cannot find this quickly, but off memory it is something like 7-8 years.

New passport idea: Digital passport with black background and red writing. UV images, and when you open it it starts to sing the national anthem. Don't forget to charge it before you hit immigration! Stamps are all digital as well and you passport has an unlimited amount of pages. Coming soon for only $499.99! Buy one get one free!

Nah, I was replying to an earlier post where the poster asked whether he/she could continue to use a passport that was full because it was still valid. I said that it doesn't matter that it's valid, because passports that are full are routinely rejected, and the holder denied entry. The risk is not worth it, even if European countries sometimes don't stamp US passports.

OOOH, yeah, no. Good way to get rejected. And I've never heard of not having a US passport stamped in Europe.

That's more like US "guidance" than anything.

ICAO is not much more than the U.S. government wants it to be when it comes to ICAO standardization for passports. The U.S. is very effective in using the U.S. VWP as a carrot and stick to get a lot of ducks lined up because of it when it comes to these things.

Counterfeit U.S. passports are a joke of an excuse for passport redesign as far as I'm concerned, as the substantive issue with US passport misuse comes from fraudulent real passport acquisition and fraudulent use of genuine, validly issued passports.

There are technology-enabled markets where real US passports are readily available and sourced for illicit use. Passport redesigns won't stop that illicit trade and use -- it has not even slowed it down in the least -- but the redesigns will cost us legitimate taxpayers and users (of US passports) more money.

Of the countries that allow US citizens in the main to enter without a visa acquired prior to travel, which ones routinely reject US passports with no blank pages?

A very tiny percentage of US passports have had more than 30% of the visa pages ever used at all; and the percentage of US passports that have had even 50% of the passport pages stamped by foreign authorities is even smaller than that. The set of US persons "routinely rejected" on arrival for full passports to countries without a general visa requirement for US citizen visitors is probably so tiny as to be not very useful for drawing a broad conclusion about full US passports.

Very negligible fraction of a percent of US passport holders has ever had a US passport that had every visa page stamped prior to arrival to another country. I am part of that negligible fraction, and I've had zero rejections on arrival even as I've had some comments from passport control types about not having any blank space to stamp. That is what over stamping is for. :D