Thursday August 30, 2007 Dave's Bit Bucket
Dave Walker's jottings - mostly pertaining to security
Thursday August 30, 2007 Why a Passport can't be treated as a definitive proof of identity...
It's "that time of the decade, again" when I need to renew my British passport.
I'm relieved to see (from here) that I don't need to have a mad dash round to find someone who can put a declaration and signature on the back of my photograph (in suitably microscopic writing) to the effect that they assert that I'm me - while my ponytail went the way of the scissors the better part of a decade ago and I'm a little plumper around the cheekbones than I was, I'm still recognisably "me" in my old passport photo.
This led me to think about the bootstrapping mechanism for new passports, and in particular, how folk are deemed worthy of being able to assert to the Passport Office that someone is genuinely who they claim to be, to the Passport Office's satisfaction.
The list of approved counter-signatories can be found at http://www.passport.gov.uk/passport_countersign.asp
From the large list presented - and notwithstanding the extending clause of "someone of similar standing in the community" - I suspect that the average person wouldn't have too much trouble finding someone who could be duped or bribed into providing a false assertion of identity for the Passport Office...
(2007-08-30 08:14:27.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback URL: http://blogs.sun.com/davew/entry/why_a_passport_can_t
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...or just make up a name and a signature anyway. Is there really much hope that the Passport Agency checks the credentials of the coutersignatory, then contacts them to obtain confirmation of the professional credentials and a specimen signature to check against the one they've got? Just a thought...
Posted by Toby Stevens on August 30, 2007 at 05:27 PM GMT #