Ross sez, "The State Department is making a profit on every passport ordered by a US citizen because it has outsourced printing to Asia, including a Thai company that has had had problems with Chinese espionage.
Not only is this stupidity from an administration supposedly committed to keeping the USA safe, it may also be illegal since Congress requires such activities to be break-even rather than to profit from the citizens it supposedly serves."
But GPO Inspector General J. Anthony Ogden, the agency's internal watchdog, doesn't share that confidence. He warned in an internal Oct. 12 report that there are "significant deficiencies with the manufacturing of blank passports, security of components, and the internal controls for the process."
The inspector general's report said GPO claimed it could not improve its security because of "monetary constraints." But the inspector general recently told congressional investigators he was unaware that the agency had booked tens of millions of dollars in profits through passport sales that could have been used to improve security, congressional aides told The Times
