LYON, France – A US Government watchdog agency is calling for front line border control officers to be given access to INTERPOL’s global database of Stolen and Lost Travel Documents (SLTD).

An analysis of border security by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reveals that ‘intelligence analysts, law enforcement officials, and forensic document experts all acknowledge that misuse of lost and stolen passports is the greatest security problem posed by the Visa Waiver Program’ through which more than 15 million people enter the US each year.

According to the report ‘officials acknowledge that an undetermined number of inadmissible aliens may have entered the United States using a lost or stolen passport,’ which are ‘prized travel documents among terrorists.’

To address this dangerous gap in security, the GAO also recommends that the US require countries participating in the Visa Waiver Program to provide INTERPOL with all non-biographical data on stolen and lost passports.

'This report underlines INTERPOL’s belief that the use of stolen and lost travel documents poses the single greatest gap in global security,' said INTERPOL Secretary General Ronald K. Noble.

'Thanks to the commitment and hard work of INTERPOL’s National Central Bureaus and General Secretariat staff, the tools now exist to plug this gap.'

Switzerland , the first country to provide direct access to the INTERPOL Stolen and Lost Travel Document database to every federal law enforcement officer, now conducts 300,000 searches each month. Because the database contains more than 12 million entries from 114 countries, the Swiss get results – every month more than 100 people are found in possession of travel documents reported stolen or lost.

'The best way for a country to protect its citizens from dangerous criminals is to prevent them from entering the country in the first place. Checking passports against INTERPOL's global database should become standard operating procedure for all countries, and we believe that the GAO's thoughtful report will move us closer to that end,' said Mr Noble.

'Imagine if a terrorist were to enter your country using a falsified stolen passport listed in INTERPOL’s database, but your country failed to check this database, allowing the terrorist to execute a deadly attack. How could that failure ever be justified? To ask this question is to answer it.'

'Now that INTERPOL’s global database exists, as well as the technology to access it at airports and other border entry points, doing so should be considered an imperative.'

France now provides its border control officers at Charles de Gaulle airport with access to the INTERPOL SLTD database, and a number of other countries are in the process of doing so as well.

To address privacy concerns, INTERPOL’s SLTD database contains passport numbers and information about the theft or loss only, and does not include any biographical information.