ews.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080729/wl_uk_afp/britaincrimepassports
Hijackers steal blank passport stash >From correspondents in London July 30, 2008 08:21am Article from: Agence France-Presse Font size: <http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24100381-401,00.html> + <http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24100381-401,00.html> - Send this article: <http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,24100381-401,00.html> Print <http://www.news.com.au/email/popup/0,23605,24100381-401,00.html> Email HIJACKERS have made off with boxes of blank British passports worth a fortune on the black market in a raid on a delivery van. Detectives said the 24 boxes of about 3000 passports and visa documents, destined for British embassies around the world, were worth about £2.5 million ($5.2m). A hijacker sped off with the vehicle on Monday when the driver stopped to buy a newspaper in Manchester. The raider jumped in the van and assaulted a second delivery man in the passenger seat before speeding off. The robber then got out and ran off, and it was then that the second delivery man realised several boxes had been stolen. "The actual value of the passports themselves is around £2.5 million," said Detective Chief Inspector Bill McGreavy of Greater Manchester police. He said he had no significant information to suggest it was a targeted theft, and police were seeking at least two suspects.. The passports, which were en route to Royal Air Force base Northolt in northwest London, were "very secure" as they contained a microchip which could be encrypted, he said. A spokesman for the Foreign Office, which was responsible for the delivery, said: "The security vans we use have an array of security features. "Although we have never used armoured vehicles, which are much less flexible and more expensive than the security vans we currently use, we have used non-armoured security vans for 15 years without incident." An industry expert said the passports would not be of much use as travel documents but warned that they could be used to create a new identity as forgers could use them as proof of identity for banks. "From that one document you could literally create your own identity as a foreign national who last month got a British passport," said Steve Beecroft, a specialist in so-called "smart technology". The stolen documents could be sold to people such as asylum seekers who wanted to pass themselves off as British citizens, he said. Deputy Prime Minister Harriet Harman, filling in while Prime Minister Gordon Brown is on holiday, called it a "serious crime" but rejected claims the Government was "sloppy" with sensitive documents. Dominic Grieve, home affairs spokesman for the opposition Conservatives, branded it the "latest in a long line of security disasters to hit the Government". In December, the Government was forced to admit that two data disks containing personal details of some 25 million people were lost in the post. Top secret files on al-Qaeda and Iraq were left on a train earlier this year, while hundreds of government laptops and memory sticks have been either lost or stolen in recent years. . <http://geo.yahoo.com/serv?s=97359714/grpId=11648958/grpspId=1705447214/msgI d=67980/stime=1217373644/nc1=3848607/nc2=3848644/nc3=5349276> [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. 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