Freedom, truth, love, beauty.

GPO Latest Executive Agency to Screwup, Act Like Dicks

From its own website the Government Printing Office’s purpose is “for gathering, cataloging, producing, providing and preserving published information in all its forms.”

It is allowed to charge other Federal branches and agencies for the cost to produce materials, but it is not allowed to profit.

Now the Washington Times reports, in “Outsourced passports netting govt. profits, risking national security” by Bill Gertz, that not only are they making huge profits off the creation of passports, but they have outsourced United States passport creation to countries all over the globe.

The GPO issued a press release (PDF) in response to the Washington Times article. My interpretation is “the State Department said we could”, “the State Department charges citizens $100 for what costs them $15, so we figured we could charge them $15 for what costs us $8”, and “when we say ‘The manufacturing of passports is conducted in Washington, D.C. at GPO facilities.’ we mean the blank passports are created in Europe, they’re fedexed to Thailand where the RFID chips are inserted and fedexed to DC, and we glue your face to the page.”

Everything about the new passports is bad. The idea of putting RFID chips in passports in the first place is bad. Creating passport manufacturing requirements that can’t be met by US companies is bad. Creating requirements for passport use across friendly borders when demand for passports can’t be met is bad. Shipping blank passports and RFID chips around the world is bad. Profiting off passports is bad.

It’s nice to see the media finally starting to actually dig into the Federal Government’s—including Executive, Judicial, and Congressional—activities and stories. It’s too bad what they are digging up is really depressing.