Addressing significant vulnerabilities in the Department of State's passport issuance process

Summary: A genuine U.S. passport is a vital document, permitting its owner to travel freely into and out of the United States, prove U.S. citizenship, obtain further identification documents, and set up bank accounts, among other things. Since May 2005, we have issued several reports identifying significant fraud vulnerabilities in the passport issuance process.1 This report (1) describes our recent work on passport fraud and (2) summarizes actions the Department of State (State) has indicated it is taking to address the fraud vulnerabilities we identified. We are also providing suggested corrective actions to reduce fraud risk in the passport program.