Travel Documents and Interpol

Interpol: In the days since the plane went missing, Interpol, an international administrative agency that facilitates co-operation between law enforcement agencies, has chastised authorities in Malaysia and elsewhere for not relying enough on its database of lost and stolen travel documents when verifying the passports of travellers at ports of entry, including airports. , according to CBC. "Last year, passengers were able to board planes more than a billion times without having their passports screened against Interpol's databases," the agency said in a statement. "Unfortunately, few member countries systematically search these databases to determine whether a passenger is using a stolen or lost travel document to board a plane." The revelation that at least two passengers on the Malaysia Airlines flight that disappeared after taking off from Kuala Lumpur were travelling on stolen passports, though likely not linked to the plane's disappearance, has underlined the security problems posed by the global trafficking in fake travel documents. Currently, only the U.S. the U.K. and the United Arab Emirates systematically cross-check travellers' documents against the database, which has accumulated more than 40 million entries from 167 countries since it was first created in 2002 in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks in the U.S. Canadian passports are favoured among counterfeiters because they attract less attention from border officials. Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.