State Dept. tightening passport controls after breach
April 16, 2009
The State Department has taken steps to tighten controls after an undercover investigator for the Government Accountability Office was able last month to obtain two U.S. passports by using bogus information.
In one case, the investigator used the Social Security number of a man who died in 1965. In the other, the investigator used the Social Security number of a 5-year-old while claiming on his application that he was 53.
State Department officials 'agreed that our investigation exposed a major vulnerability in the department's passport issuance process and acknowledged that they have issued other fraudulently obtained passports in the past,' the GAO said in a report released this week. In all, the GAO's undercover investigator last month 'was easily able to obtain four genuine U.S. passports using counterfeit or fraudulently obtained documents,' the agency asserted.
The Washington Post
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