From my booklet:
(Argument): “Full Faith and Credit/Short-Form is Good Enough for Passport Office.” Others say that if a COLB is good enough to get a passport it should be good enough for anything, and that not accepting another state’s COLB at face value is a violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
That’s not what the Dept of Health and Human Services Inspector General said in a 1999 report (19) on birth certificate fraud. That report specifically recommends that states NOT take any single document at face value because it is so easy to get authentic documents from fraudulent documents – especially since half of the state registrars reported that someone in their system had been caught falsifying records. Each state is allowed to decide what kind of evidence it requires for specific claims and is strongly encouraged to always require more than one form of proof for claims, as well as implementing means to detect fraudulent documents.
An expert in electronic document fraud adds (20)that fraud is so very much easier to accomplish now that records are stored electronically, and can be manipulated remotely by hackers – in which case what is printed out electronically would seem legitimate to anybody looking at it. The only way to know the fraud that had happened would be by looking at the detailed history of the record, the embedded transaction log for the electronic record. It’s harder to fake an original long-form than an electronic record, because a fake paper record involves physically replacing the record in the Vital Records Office, whereas an electronic record can be altered remotely and leave no signs of tampering.
It is known that the passport records of John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama were all illegally accessed (21) in early 2008 – Obama’s 3 separate times. Several investigations of the breaches have been done (internal DOS investigation mentioned here (22) and OIG report here (23)), but according to the descriptions none of them seemed to involve checking to see whether those passport files had been altered. All were concerned about the security of the system and how the breach happened or internal disciplinary issues, not the potential result of the breaches.
Imagine that the only birth or citizenship record for Obama was in his passport file, and that file had been accessed by “birthers” who changed his record to say he was born in Indonesia. Checking the genuineness of records that could be compromised is a necessary protection for everyone – especially in a politically-charged climate where the stakes are high and opponents abundant.
From my booklet:
(Argument): “Full Faith and Credit/Short-Form is Good Enough for Passport Office.” Others say that if a COLB is good enough to get a passport it should be good enough for anything, and that not accepting another state’s COLB at face value is a violation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
That’s not what the Dept of Health and Human Services Inspector General said in a 1999 report (19) on birth certificate fraud. That report specifically recommends that states NOT take any single document at face value because it is so easy to get authentic documents from fraudulent documents – especially since half of the state registrars reported that someone in their system had been caught falsifying records. Each state is allowed to decide what kind of evidence it requires for specific claims and is strongly encouraged to always require more than one form of proof for claims, as well as implementing means to detect fraudulent documents.
An expert in electronic document fraud adds (20)that fraud is so very much easier to accomplish now that records are stored electronically, and can be manipulated remotely by hackers – in which case what is printed out electronically would seem legitimate to anybody looking at it. The only way to know the fraud that had happened would be by looking at the detailed history of the record, the embedded transaction log for the electronic record. It’s harder to fake an original long-form than an electronic record, because a fake paper record involves physically replacing the record in the Vital Records Office, whereas an electronic record can be altered remotely and leave no signs of tampering.
It is known that the passport records of John McCain, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama were all illegally accessed (21) in early 2008 – Obama’s 3 separate times. Several investigations of the breaches have been done (internal DOS investigation mentioned here (22) and OIG report here (23)), but according to the descriptions none of them seemed to involve checking to see whether those passport files had been altered. All were concerned about the security of the system and how the breach happened or internal disciplinary issues, not the potential result of the breaches.
Imagine that the only birth or citizenship record for Obama was in his passport file, and that file had been accessed by “birthers” who changed his record to say he was born in Indonesia. Checking the genuineness of records that could be compromised is a necessary protection for everyone – especially in a politically-charged climate where the stakes are high and opponents abundant.