GA4GH Passports and AAI promise seamless federated authentication across genomics platforms, but real-world implementations face critical barriers that limit adoption. This session addresses two fundamental challenges preventing Passports from reaching their full potential. The problems: Current Passport implementations suffer from bloated tokens containing extensive entitlements that exceed HTTP header limits Passport implementers must establish complex point-to-point trust relationships that undermine the federated vision The solutions: we will explore practical approaches to lightweight, scalable Passport implementations. Narrowly-scoped tokens that fit within HTTP request headers, by having analysis systems issue context-specific Passports or by parameterising token exchange for minimal tokens from original issuers Simplified federation models that reduce interconnect complexity while securely establishing trust