Camouflage passport
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A camouflage passport is a passport issued in the name of non-existent country that is intended to look like a real country’s passport to the untrained eye. They are marketed to security-conscious international travelers and usually sold by businesses via the internet or mail order. A camouflage passport is designed to look realistic enough to allow a person to conceal his nationality in event of a hijacking, riot or some similar situation where his identity may single him out as a crime victim. To this end, such passports are also often sold with a package of matching documents, including an international driver’s license and similar supporting identity papers. As of 2006, prices tend to range between $400 and $1000.
Camouflage passports are generally issued in names of countries that no longer exist or have changed their name. Others use the names of places or political subdivisions that exist within a real country, but that have never issued and cannot issue passports. Still others are issued in the names of wholly fictitious countries but that typically have a plausible or familiar ring to their names.
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[edit] Issuing "countries" of camouflage passports
- British Guiana (now Co-operative Republic of Guyana)
- British Honduras (now Belize)
- British Hong Kong (now Hong Kong Special Administrative Region)
- British West Indies (place name, various British Caribbean islands)
- Burma (now Union of Myanmar)
- Dutch Guiana (now Republic of Suriname)
- Eastern Samoa (now Territory of American Samoa)
- New Granada (now Republic of Colombia)
- New Hebrides (now Republic of Vanuatu)
- Netherlands East Indies (now become part of the Republic of Indonesia)
- Rhodesia (now the Republic of Zimbabwe)
- South Vietnam (absorbed into Socialist Republic of Vietnam)
- Spanish Guinea (now Republic of Equatorial Guinea)
- Zanzibar (merged into United Republic of Tanzania)
[edit] Distinguished from “fantasy passports”
While sometimes carelessly referred to as “fantasy passports,” camouflage passports differ from fantasy passports in several ways: Camouflage passports are intended for use as a practical security tool, while fantasy passports are intended as novelties or, ostensibly, to denote membership in the issuing entity. Camouflage passports are sold by businesses who sell passports in the names of many non-countries, none of whom they claim to represent, while fantasy passports are sold by an entity that is issuing a passport in their own name. Lastly, camouflage passports are calculated to seem like they come from a real state of the usual, recognized type. The identity of that state is immaterial as long as it is assumed to be real by a person to whom the passport is lawfully exhibited. Fantasy passports also are “official looking,” but this is only to enhance the credibility of the issuing entity and bolster the holder’s own sense of membership therein. Of course, a camouflage passport might be used as a novelty, while a fantasy passport might me used as camouflage, there is, accordingly, some overlap.
Fantasy passports are usually issued both by and in the name of certain state-like or pseudo-state entities. These include putative micronations, non-territorial states or principalities, pseudo-states, etc. Interest in these passports generally turns on their novelty appeal.
Examples include:
- Dukedom of New Sealand passports (not Sealand, the principality housed in Roughs Tower, but apparently an Antarctic iceberg)
- NSK (Neue Slovenische Kunst) passports issued by the non-territorial Slovenian art collective championed by the rock band Laibach
- World Service Authority (WSA) passports, which are apparently honored by at least a few countries. (See World Passport.)
On the other hand, both camouflage and fantasy passports are wholly different from second passports where a person, typically with dual citizenship, is issued two legitimate passports by different countries.
[edit] Legality of camouflage passports
Camouflage passports are not regarded as counterfeit passports because they are not purporting to be documents that are internationally recognised. They are not forgeries of actual documents, since legitimate passports from those entities do not exist. Moreover, they are not designed to defraud any legitimate entity, nor are they likely to because of their patently bogus nature. (The analogy to printing Confederate money is instructive.) Nevertheless, some governments have expressed fear at the possible use them for criminal purposes, including opening fraudulent bank accounts. However, the potential for fraud here is directly proportional to the ignorance or negligence of the defrauded.
Possession and travel with a camouflage passport in the name of a non-existent country is not illegal in most countries, including the United States (at least federally), Canada, or the United Kingdom although the holder of such a document is unlikely to be allowed to use them to enter the country. Although there are occasional reports of officials accepting these documents, this is invariably a result of error rather than tacit acceptance that the document is a valid travel document.
In the United States, at least one federal court has discussed camouflage passports (in relation to whether a defendant was a flight risk). Notably, the district court judge does not imply that possession of such a document was illegal:
| Also found in Mr. Anderson’s home, however, was a passport from 'British Guiana' issued to 'Dr. Paul Anderson,' residing at '2012 Nevada NW' in Washington, D.C., with Walter Anderson’s photograph on it. . . . The defense claims that this is a legal 'camouflage passport' acquired by Mr. Anderson to conceal his United States citizenship in the event he was ever abducted by terrorists, that 'British Guiana' now is a nonexistent country (British Guiana became the Cooperative Republic of Guyana in 1966), and that Mr. Anderson could not actually travel on this passport. This may be the case, but it is also true that such 'camouflage passports' may be used as false identification in bank transactions in other countries, where bank employees are not generally trained to spot false passports." United States v. Walter Anderson, 384 F.Supp.2d 32, 37, (D.D.C. 2005).[1] |
The U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, on the other hand, treats privately issued passports rather benignly. At it reads:
- A privately issued (unofficial) travel document, such as a ‘World Service Passport’, is unacceptable in place of a U.S. passport as evidence of U.S. citizenship or as evidence of a person’s identity.7 FAM 1311.1-6(b)
