Sunday, February 25, 2007

Passport theft quadruples in seven years?

In 1999, the number of passports reported lost or stolen in the UK was 62,364. Since then, every year, the number has increased, often two fold. The result is that last year in the UK a staggering 290,996 were reported lost or stolen.

I'm not quite sure what this means. Either we are, as a nation are becoming more scatty and easily mislay things. Or identity theft really is becoming thoroughly endemic and the authorities lack the means to tackle it in a serious way.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Perhaps a lot of people renewed "lost" passports last year because they thought this would avoid having quite so much biometric and other personal information stored about them than will be required in the near future.

Rich Tee said...

The last time I got a passport it came in a big envelope that said "passport office" on it, which is a bit of a big giveaway, considering that my bank goes out of its way to make my debit card envelope look anonymous.

But that was 10 years ago so maybe they do things differently now.

AntiCitizenOne said...

I think it's people trying to LEAVE!

It's honestly harder to leave the country than get in.