Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: "This is all much too little, much too late."
Between the lines:
much too little : Expect more from the next government.
much too late : Expect it soon.
Those fingerprints are verified against what? They can take blood, semen and iris scans for all it matters. There is no way to verify who those biometrics really belong to.
I can walk into a Home Affairs office, slip someone a wad of cash and get an ID book under the name Wile E Coyote. Once that's through the system, I then go back and get a passport with my biometrics tied to that dodgy name.
Granted, you can't do it twice (they'll have your data from the first passport), but if you're fresh from Al Queada boot camp and looking to get into the USA, you're only going to do it once anyway.
The UK has just revoked South Africa's short term 'no visa' entry rights because of the sheer number of dodgy passports being issued by the DHA.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&set_id=1&art_id=nw20090224132638974C233056
The problem is not forgery. It's corrupt officials. I fail to see how making the passports 'high tech' is going to stop a bent official from issuing one with phoney details anyway.
This is just (expensive) security theatre.
RTFA.
"The CRS, as a branch of Congress, is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act."
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.
