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The Practical Implications Of The WHTIby Scott Stewart and Fred Burton for STRATFOR
Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative Web
site (STRATFOR is not responsible for the
content of other Web sites.)
On June 1, 2009, the land and sea
portion of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI)
will go into effect. The WHTI is a program launched as a
result of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act
of 2004 and intended to standardize the documents required to
enter the United States. The
stated goal of WHTI is to facilitate entry for
U.S. citizens and legitimate foreign visitors while reducing the possibility of
people entering the country using fraudulent
documents. Prior to the WHTI, American travelers
to Mexico, Canada and several countries in the Caribbean
needed only a driver’s license and birth certificate to
re-enter the United States, while American travelers to other
regions of the world required U.S. passports to return. This
meant that immigration officials had to examine driver’s
licenses and birth certificates from every state, and since
the driver’s licenses and birth certificates of all the states
change over time, there were literally hundreds of different
types of documents that could be used by travelers at points
of entry. In practical terms, this meant there was no way
immigration officers could be familiar with the security
features of each identification document, thereby making it
easier for foreigners to use counterfeit or fraudulently
altered documents to enter the country by claiming to be
returning The air portion of the WHTI went into
effect in January 2007 and required that all international air
travelers use passports to enter the The WHTI will greatly simplify the
number of travel documents that immigration officials have to
scrutinize. It will also mean that the documents needed to
enter the Identity document fraud has existed
for as long as identity documents have. Like much
sophisticated crime, document fraud has been an evolutionary
process. Advancements in document security have been followed
by advancements in fraud techniques, which in turn have forced
governments to continue to advance their security efforts. In
recent years, the advent of color copiers, powerful desktop
computers with sophisticated graphics programs and laser
printers has propelled this document-fraud arms race into
overdrive. In addition to sophisticated physical
security features such as ultraviolet markings and holograms,
perhaps the most significant security features of newer
identification documents such as passports and visas are that
they are machine-readable and linked to a database that can be
cross-checked when the document is swiped through a reader at
a point of entry. Since 2007, Likewise, advancements in security
features have also made it far more difficult to alter genuine
documents by doing things like changing the photo affixed to
it (referred to as a photo substitution or “photo sub”).
Certainly, there are some very high-end document forgers who
can still accomplish this — such as those employed by
intelligence agencies — but such operations are very difficult
and the documents produced are very expensive.
One of the benefits of the WHTI is
that it will now force those wishing to obtain genuine
documents by fraud to travel to a higher level — it has, in
effect, upped the ante. As STRATFOR has long noted, driver’s
licenses pose serious national security vulnerability.
Driver’s licenses are, in fact, the closet thing to a
Birth certificates are also relatively
easy to obtain illegally. The relative ease of fraudulently
obtaining birth certificates as well as driver’s licenses is
seen in federal document-fraud cases (both documents are
required to apply for a For those able to afford the fees of
high-end alien smugglers, who can charge up to $30,000 for a
package of identification documents that contains a genuine
U.S. passport with genuine supporting documents (birth
certificate, social security card and driver’s license), or
$10,000 to $15,000 for a genuine U.S. visa (tied to a
database, the newer machine-readable visas are very difficult
to counterfeit), the WHTI will not make much difference. These
high-end document vendors obtain legitimate identification
documents by paying corrupt officials who have been carefully
cultivated. That said, the WHTI should succeed in
causing the vast majority of criminal aliens, illegal economic
immigrants and even militants — people who have not
traditionally patronized high-end document vendors — to change
the way they enter the United States. Of course, perhaps
the simplest way is to take the low road. That is, get to
But there are other ways that the WHTI
measures can be circumvented. For example, the crush of
passport applications the WHTI is now causing will create a
distinct vulnerability in the short term. Although the U.S.
Department of State has hired a large number of new examiners
to process the flood of passport applications it is receiving
(and also a number of new DSS special agents to investigate
fraud cases), the system is currently overwhelmed by the
volume of passport applications. Historically, passport examiners have
had their performance evaluations based on the number of
passport applications they process rather than on the number
of fraudulent applications they catch (which has long been a
source of friction between the DSS and the Bureau of Consular
Affairs). This emphasis on numerical quotas has been
documented in U.S. Government Accountability Office reports
that have noted that the quotas essentially force examiners to
take shortcuts in their fraud-detection efforts. As a result,
many genuine passports have been issued to people who did not
have a legitimate right to them. The current overwhelming
flood of passport applications as a result of WHTI, when
combined with a batch of new examiners who are rated on
numerical quotas, will further enhance this vulnerability.
Unless a passport application has an obvious fraud indicator,
it will likely slip through the cracks and a fraudulent
applicant will receive a genuine Stolen passports are another area to
consider. In addition to being photo-subbed, which has become
more difficult, stolen passports can also be used as travel
documents by people who resemble the owner of the document.
All the holograms, microprinting and other security features
that have been placed on the laminates of passport photo pages
tend to make it difficult to clearly see the photo of the
passport holder. Also, people change over time, so a person
who was issued a passport eight years ago can look
substantially different from their passport photo today. The
passport process and the laminate can also make it especially
difficult to see the facial features of dark-skinned people.
This means it is not at all uncommon for a person to be able
to impersonate someone and use his or her passport without
altering it. This problem persists, even with digital photos
being included with the information embedded electronically in
the memory chips of newer electronic passports.
Because of these possibilities, stolen
passports are worth a tidy sum on the black market. Indeed,
shortly after On the flip side, many Americans are
unaware of the monetary value of their passport — which is
several times the $100 they paid to have it issued. They do
not realize that when they carry their passport it is like
toting around a wad of $100 bills. Tour guides who collect the
passports of all the people in their tour group and then keep
them in a bag or backpack can end up carrying around tens of
thousands of dollars in identification documents — which would
make a really nice haul for a petty criminal in the But While there are efforts currently
under way to create an international database to rapidly share
data about lost and stolen blank and issued passports, there
is generally a time lag before lost and stolen foreign
passports are entered into There have also been cases of jihadist
groups using the passports of militants from visa waiver
countries who have died in order to move other operatives into
the Ultimately, the WHTI will help close
some significant loopholes — especially regarding the use of
fraud-prone driver’s licenses and birth certificates for
international travel — but the program will not end all
document fraud. Document vendors will continue to shift and
adjust their efforts to adapt to the WHTI and exploit other
vulnerabilities in the system.
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