Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing the end of the era so to speak, of "fake passports". So what are we talking about here? Well I thought of making this video after reading a recent article in the Bangkok Post, that is bangkokpost.com, the article is titled: Immigration ramps up checks on foreigners. Quoting directly and this is a pretty small little excerpt and it sort of is within line of the main thrust of the article but it is kind of tangential to it. I urge those who are watching this video if you're interested, go check out that article in detail but quoting directly: "He showed his Cambodian possible to authorities, but a check showed his biometric information was linked to two counterfeit Taiwanese passports."

Interesting I thought. A couple of things. First off go and read that article, a lot going on in there. It is actually pretty interesting, they were talking about intercepting International criminals and things but what I thought was really to the point again to the title of this video, there was a time when fake passports were a thing. I have seen a couple of them over the years unfortunately in having to deal with folks quite frankly that were dealing with criminal charges here in Thailand. Well I wasn't dealing with them as an Attorney, obviously I am not a Thai Attorney. I am an American Attorney and I am a Thai citizen. I am the Managing Director of this firm but Thai Attorneys directly deal with Thai legal matters here in our firm. That being said, there is certain kind of liaison capacity, kind of almost translation, interpretation capacity that I am often kind of for lack of a better term, privy to such matters. Yeah I have seen a couple of fake passports over the years because I have seen people that have been caught with them but when they were caught with them, they were caught using kind of for lack of a better term analog technology, being able to look at seals and holograms and things like this and determine "oh this isn't a real passport. You wipe this thing and then you put information in it, yeah this isn't real."

Well that era I think is pretty well over because Biometrics has just kind of put it to bed. There is really no faking, well I am sure, never say never, but really on any real practical level there is no real faking fingerprints or facial recognition or even retina scans or anything of that nature. So again, the notion that a fake passport has any really use in the present day or at least here in Thailand, or anywhere in ASEAN that I know of, I am pretty sure everybody uses Biometrics and Biometric passport readers so I just don't see where you are going to see fake passport being in continued use any time into the overly near future.