mart360

So much for the latest method in making sure we are who we say we are!!!

Expert clones 'secure' passports - MSN News UK - news & weather


I had to laugh at the ens paragraph, where the home office bod, stated more investment was needed, lol cue another round of price increases.


Mart

The Zohan

And how ironic - last week this happened

Hijackers nab thousands of blank British passports - Yahoo! News UK

LONDON (AFP) - Hijackers made off with boxes of blank British passports worth a fortune on the black market in a raid on a delivery van, police said Tuesday.

Detectives said the 24 boxes of about 3,000 passports and visa documents, destined for British embassies around the world, were worth some 2.5 million pounds .

The theft occurred when the van driver stopped to buy a newspaper in Oldham, north Manchester.

The raider jumped in the van and assaulted a second delivery man in the passenger seat before speeding off onto an unmarked road.

The robber then ran off, and when the second delivery man felt safe enough, he checked the van and found that several boxes had been stolen.

"The actual value of the passports themselves is around 2.5 million pounds," said Detective Chief Inspector Bill McGreavy, adding that he had no significant information to suggest it was a targeted theft.

"The commodity stolen is unusual. Whether the commodity was the intended items I don't know," he said. "The offenders in this incident have not taken all the items from the van. They've not cleared the van out."

He said detectives were hunting at least two suspects. "The passenger has told us that both doors were opened simultaneously so I think there was a minimum of two offenders."

The van was being forensically examined, he added.

The passports were "very secure" as they contained a micro-chip which can be encrypted, he said.

Cabinet minister Harriet Harman, filling in while Prime Minister Gordon Brown is on holiday, called it a "serious crime".

But the deputy leader of the governing Labour Party did not think it "necessarily shows a sloppy attitude".

David_Dickson

Its a complete farce isnt it?
tey take security "very seriously" yet manage to have thousands of blansks stolen!

It doesnt matter how fancy they make the passports, as soon as the are released, someone somewhere will be able to copy them and forge them.
Unfortunatly, its us who have to stump up the costs for this rubbish. How much is a new passport these days?

bugeyeandy

New passport is £72 at the moment.
The whole secure passport thing is a joke anyway , we're part of the EU. All these people need to do is forge a passport from another country and in they come - easy!

The Zohan

Quite, with the problems we have with people crossing our borders illegally, some 750,000 according to the gov't - it will only take 1 or 2 serious/committed terrorists to get in this way to cause havoc.

Passport or id cards will not prevent this, proper border security and intelligence is better use of money and resources.

ChrisB

I'd heard one of the delivery van drivers was arrested over the nicked blanks. Did anything come of that?