Agents Easily Get U.S. Passports with Bogus Info

Despite government promises to tighten the process of issuing e-Passports, undercover agents had no trouble getting the passports using bogus information, according to the Center for Public Integrity.

In one instance, federal agents were able to dupe the State Department by using a dead man's name on an e-Passport application, according to Gregory Kutz, an investigator for the Government Accountability Office, who will testify Thursday to a Senate committee about the matter.

This is not the first time undercover agents have blatantly exposed U.S. security holes in obtaining passports.

Last year, in a similar test of post-9/11 security, a federal investigator obtained passports using phony documents and the identities of a dead man and a 5-year-old boy.

"State's passport issuance process continues to be vulnerable to fraud," Kutz says in prepared testimony obtained by the CPI.

Kutz said his team was able to get the State Department to issue five of the seven e-Passports it requested using fake information.

According to the CPI, Sen. Benjamin Cardin, D-Md., who chairs the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security, is introducing legislation Thursday in a bid to fix the security holes exposed by GAO. The legislation would give officials who screen e-Passport applications new authority to access information in sensitive federal, state and other databases to help identify fraudulent applicants, the CPI notes.

"The U.S. passport is the gold standard for identification. It certifies an individual's identity and U.S. citizenship, and allows the passport holder to travel in and out of the United States and to foreign countries, obtain further identification documents, and set up bank accounts," Cardin said. "We simply cannot issue U.S. passports in this country on the basis of fraudulent documents. There is too much at stake."