It may soon get harder to visit the UK--at least if your a national of one of 11 countries now off the so-called visa-waiver list. The idea, says the UK Border Agency, is to keep tabs on those people who might endanger the country. But among the 11 are Brazil, Malaysia, South Africa and Trinidad and Tobago, places that you might not associate with scary stuff.
The Border Agency says it plans to work with the governments in question to see if they can't stay on the visa-waiver list; a final decision won't be made until early 2009. But should risk reduction not be seen, even more foreign visitors will have to submit fingerprints and get a visa before arriving in the UK. The new rules would mean that Britain requires visas of 80 percent of the world's population.
When the US clamped down of visiting foreigners after 9/11, many countries didn't appreciate it. In probably the most famous show of displeasure, Brazil decided to charge Americans $100 per visa starting in 2004 in retaliation for what its citizens had to pay to visit the states. A pro-tourism group in the UK is worried the same thing might happen to the British as a result of the ever-widening visa net.
There's a little encouraging news from the State Department's ongoing security investigation: Employees aren't trying to look at your passport... unless you're Beyonce. Or John McCain. Or the late Anna Nicole Smith.
The department ordered a probe after word leaked in March that files for the three presidential candidates still in the race had been improperly pulled from the Passport Information Electronic Records System, to which about 20,000 people have access. A new test showed that out of 150 celebrity names (chosen from Google's most searched-for-list and Sports Illustrated), 127 of them had been accessed recently. Knowles' documents were peeked at more than 100 times.
It's probably for the best that B seems to be staying in the country right now; she's set to film a thriller called "Obsessed" with Idris Elba and Ali Larter in LA and she is reportedly in talks to join the cast of "Desperate Housewives."
When news broke that three separate contractors looked at Barack Obama's passport file three times since January, it got us thinking about protecting your personal information while traveling.
According to State Department spokesman Sean McCormack the breach appears to be an "imprudent curiosity" among the contract workers who viewed Obama's passport.
This incident was similar to a breach of Bill Clinton's passport information during the 1992 presidential campaign. The State Department reported that someone had ripped out pages from his passport file from the late 1960s and '70s, then the FBI investigated.
Don't fool yourself into thinking this sort of thing only happens to those running for president. Identity snoopers can quickly become identity thieves, and those who travel often are most susceptible. After the jump, we put together a quick list of seven things you can do to help protect your private information not only while on the road, but also once you return home.
Given all those new passport woes during 2007, we're sure plenty of you have sob stories about how long it took to get a new passport. But spare a thought for Maria Kostova in Macedonia who had to wait more than 20 years to finally get her right to travel.
Part of Maria's problem was she was born in 1898, and the Macedonian authorities had misplaced the birth records from the nineteenth century. So when she applied for a passport back in the 80s, they said she didn't officially exist and couldn't have one.
Recently, the Macedonians unearthed an old archive and told Maria they could now issue a passport. Whether or not a 110-year-old woman still plans to go abroad on vacation is a question the authorities haven't stopped to consider, and Maria simply said "It's a nice surprise." We're not gonna print what we'd say if we'd had to wait 20 years for a passport.
Attention all drug traffickers and people smugglers across Europe: Things are changing on Friday. The next stage of the Schengen Agreement will come into effect and that means that a whole bunch of border crossings will disappear.
The biggest changes will be between Western and Eastern European countries, like on the border between Germany and Poland, where the passport checkers and border police will be out of work and replaced simply by signs welcoming you to the next country. On the other hand, borders on the outside of the new Europe, like those leading to Russia, will be tightened up to stop the wrong things (and the wrong people) getting into the European Union.
We should be happy that there won't be long queues of cars waiting to cross borders or the annoyance of having to get off a bus for a search each time you reach a new country, but we're kind of sad that we're going to be missing out on pretty passport stamps.
Earlier this summer, the feds fell way behind on all the applications that rolled in after new rules requiring passports in the western hemisphere kicked in. US citizens trying to get new passports before trips to, say, Cabo, were inundating offices and causing a monumental backlog thanks to government unpreparedness. (Things got so bad, congressman Tom Lantos put his foot in his mouth comparing the delays to Hurricane Katrina.)
So while the Department of Homeland Security worked through the mess, passport procrastinators had the freedom to take trips to Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean without passports. (Proof of an application was all that you needed.)
Starting today, though, the special rules expire, and you'll need the real deal in order to leave or re-enter the United States. Fortunately, we've already told you how to get a passport--rules that are good, backlog or not.
The State Department said Friday it has worked through the giant backlog in passport applications and that processing times are back to normal, this after months of delays and endless complaining from passport procrastinators across the country.
The department hired hundreds of new workers and the waiting period for a standard application back to six to eight weeks (it was 10 to 12 weeks) and three weeks for expedited service.
Furthermore, by the end of September, when the temporarily eased passport restrictions with Canada, Mexico and some Carribbean islands are set to stiffen, the State Department will be able to process 500,000 applications per week due to the increase in personnel and capacity at passport production centers.
Good news, according to the State Department, if you paid for expedited processing, you will get your passport in 3 days... if each day is 168 hours long. Yep, new turnaround time for U.S. passports with the $60 expedited fee is three weeks. Long ago we told you there were no guarantees with the $60 fee, and we explained how to navigate the current passport application logjam -- nothing has changed there.
Aside from now assigning a time frame to "expedite", and who knows if that time frame will actually hold -- allot ten weeks people -- there is still plenty of talk about hiring 800 more workers to handle the burgeoning passport trade.
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