U.S. Ready To Take Additional Steps To Stop Passport Fraud


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July 30, 2010 10:20 p.m. EST

Topics: politics, civil, human rights, crime, law and justice, laws, United States
Tejinder Singh - AHN News Correspondent

Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) - The State Department is taking additional measures to plug holes exposed by the results of an undercover sting operation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO), journalists were told at the regular briefing on Friday.

“There are some definite steps that we think can be taken to strengthen our ability to detect fraud in passport applications. We believe that we have done a lot in recent years, but clearly this points out that we have more work to do,” said PJ Crowley, the State Department spokesman.

Crowley outlined the necessary steps as, “Some expanded authorities that allow us to have complete access to the same kinds of information that states have access to when issuing drivers’ licenses so that there’s some portion of the database that we have access to today if we can expand the authorities.”

“And one way to do that would be by designating consular affairs as a law enforcement entity so that we could have fuller access to information and that way do a more effective job of detecting the kind of action that the GAO did in its investigation,” he added.

“Standardization of birth and identity documents,” along with “requiring American citizens, if they have one, to provide their social security number,” as some of the additional ways to verify the documents, Crowley noted.

The latest GAO sting is a follow-up of a similar operation two years ago when the GAO was able to obtain four genuine passports using fake information.

The State Department says it made some improvements in the wake of that investigation, including more fraud training and better information sharing with law enforcement and the Social Security Administration.

“We will work with the Congress and we think that there will be support in the Congress for the kinds of steps that we want to take,” Crowley said on Friday, concluding, “And finally, understanding that as we are continuing to strengthen the processes underneath the issuance of passports, we want to make sure that we have the resources necessary to do that work.”


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