I can confirm that it is also the case in Italy and Mexico. My family and I stayed there recently. In both countries, they took copies of our passports to send them to law enforcement agencies as part of the hotel check-in process.

I was living in Houston at the time and I was in one of those cars stuck in the freeway. It took us roughly 40 hours to reach Dallas. It is also important to mention that we were fleeing Hurricane Rita (category 5 at some point), only a month after Hurricane Katrina. Memories of the damages caused by Hurricane Katrina played a major role in our decision to evacuate.

Amazon Prime and Costco for me. I have the executive membership at Costco, which basically pays for itself with the annual 2% reward on purchases.