I’ve said before that the new “super-duper” biometric passports weren’t going to stop anything and I was right. You can still get a legitimate US passport using fraudulent means.
Since 2007, the U.S. State Department has been issuing high-tech “e-passports,” which contain computer chips carrying biometric data to prevent forgery. Unfortunately, according to a March report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), getting one of these supersecure passports under false pretenses isn’t particularly difficult for anyone with even basic forgery skills.
A GAO investigator managed to obtain four genuine U.S. passports using fake names and fraudulent documents. In one case, he used the Social Security number of a man who had died in 1965. In another, he used the Social Security number of a fictitious 5-year-old child created for a previous investigation, along with an ID showing that he was 53 years old. The investigator then used one of the fake passports to buy a plane ticket, obtain a boarding pass, and make it through a security checkpoint at a major U.S. airport. (When presented with the results of the GAO investigation, the State Department agreed that there was a “major vulnerability” in the passport issuance process and agreed to study the matter.)
More than 70 countries have adopted the biometric passports, which officials describe as a revolution in immigration security. However, the GAO’s investigation proves that even the best technology can’t keep a country safe when the bureaucracy behind it fails.
There are always going to be holes in the system. Creating new biometric passports will never solve anything. It will only make it slightly harder to do what you did before and more of your personal information will be placed in a database somewhere for it to be leaked somewhere else. Then, your biometric information will be copied and used for nefarious purposes as well.
Governments will install more checks and security points, but, they will still be just as insecure as the original paper ones. Even if you start requiring DNA at birth, the database that DNA is held in will never be 100% secure and free from identity theft worries.
