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| Europe |
| New Belgian passport wins Interpol prize |
| 2003-10-02 |
| Thought this looks promising... Belgium’s new passports have been awarded a prize for excellence by Interpol – not one has been forged since the new passport was launched in 2001. Before the introduction of digital passports, Belgium had a reputation for fake passports, due in part to several blank passports being stolen from municipal services in the 1990s. But since 2001 the distribution of passports has come under the auspices of the federal government – municipal services being permitted only to physically had out the documents. Thanks to cutting-edge technology it has become much more difficult to forge a Belgian passport. Apart from an ordinary picture, there is also a micro-perforated version of the image complete with personal data. |
| Posted by:Seafarious |
| #4 Got a Belgian wife with one of those new machine readable passports. Boy, did she have to like reprove her bona fides to get it while we were back in Antwerp. I'd say they are tightening things up - better than the US State Dept in Soddyland are. |
| Posted by: Jack is Back! 2003-10-2 6:46:54 PM |
| #3 Big woop, are they checking to see if the documents being presented to the Belgium Passport Service in order to get one of these are correct? |
| Posted by: Steve 2003-10-2 12:40:32 PM |
| #2 Block all Pakistani entries into the US until their country adopts the same system. |
| Posted by: Superhose 2003-10-2 12:35:08 PM |
| #1 Who'd want one, anyway? |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2003-10-2 11:28:02 AM |