Passport - The challenges faced by identification document issuers

Forgeries

Passport and Identification Document forgeries are a major and common issue confronting governments worldwide.

Alteration or modification of details on genuine documents

Genuine passports have their original details altered and modified.

Unauthorised creation of documents using blank genuine stationary

Unauthorised passports can be easily created if access to genuine stationary used to print the passports is obtained.

Field authentication of passports

It is often impossible to conduct any definitive field authentication and each country incorporates different security features, making it even more difficult to conduct such authentication. Often the passports in doubt to be sent to experts in the issuing country and specialized equipment used to identify authenticity even for low quality forgeries.

Advanced forgery techniques

Passport are easily forged and copied by forgers. There are two key methods of forgery;

• Redrawing where the forgers redraw the document producing high quality forgeries
  
• Scanning where a photograph or a scanner is used to capture the image to reprint the document, always producing a degraded forgery