ID Theft and US PAssports - A new Vulnerability. Click for link to story

We've talked and written a great deal about "composite" identity theft. that's where someone makes up a fake person by stealing pieces of information from real people. Now we discover that US passports are being obtained using these constructed identities.

"Using counterfeit documents and the identities of a dead man and a 5-year-old boy, a government investigator obtained American passports in a test of security measures. Despite efforts to improve passport security since the Sept. 11 attacks, the investigator fooled passport and postal service employees on four separate applications, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office." From the New York Times article

In the never ending saga of trying to connect a flesh-and-blood human being with a name, birth date, birth place, and Social Security number once again we discover n this problem with passports how difficult this has become. The bad guys have a thousand ways of getting information and creating legitimate looking personalities and authentications.

As a society we are stuck between onerous and almost impossible verification techniques and "customer friendly" delivery of vital documents such as a passport.

Stay tuned to this blog for further exploration of how that might eventually happen.

Keep your documents safe!