> but it's a privacy nightmare.

I've gone the other way from Denmark to UK. And I've often had to mail copies of my passport or other identity documents via email. And my bank requires me to regular scan my face to check that it aligns with the picture in my passport.

It's the same in the US. We're really lucky that it's technically impossible for fraudsters to email pictures of stolen passports (or stolen pictures of passports) to banks and other companies for fraudulent purposes.