There has been an interesting development in the story we told you a few days ago, about the 3000 blank passports stolen in the UK.
The Times is reporting that British police have arrested a man, believed to be the delivery man who accompanied the driver of the van in which the passports were being transported.
If you recall, the driver had nipped into a newsagent’s for a bar of chocolate, leaving his assistant alone in the unarmoured van.
According to the Greater Manchester Police, “a man from Oldham was arrested this morning on suspicion of conspiracy to commit robbery and is currently in police custody.”
By the way, following my earlier post, I’m indebted to blog reader Pawel Z who writes that even if the stolen passports did not contain a micro chip, the chip used in British passports is “a fairly standard one (ISO 14443) and can be legally obtained on the market.”
According to Pawel: “Last year it was proved that it was possible to clone passport chip content… So, if you have a blank passport, you can easy buy the chip. In addition, you can read data from someone’s passport and write it into your blank one. And there you go, you have someone else identity proved by a ‘secure’ passport.”
Thanks Pawel.
* Image source: Orangejon’s Flickr photostream (Creative Commons 2.0)
