An interesting thing I saw on a UK documentary about UK immigration was the case of a lady from Jamaica who was travelling on what turned out to be a passport that was not hers.

Immigration officers suspicions were raised because the existing stamps on the passport didn't match the travellers profile or her reason for entering the UK. A case of experienced officers just having a feeling that something wasn't quite right.

She had changed her hair to look like the picture on the passport and on first inspection I must say you wouldn't really have questioned that the women on the passport photo wasn't the woman holding the passport.

They 'found her out' by taking their own photograph of her. Putting the two photographs side by side it was then blingingly obvious that they were not the same person. Uncannily wierd.

The reason for telling you all this.....

This whole idea of carrying an official document with a photograph is most probably blinding airport security personnel into a false sense of security (!) thinking it looks like you therefore you MUST be the person in the passport.

If you are trying to beat the system you would never carry an ID with a photo of you with blond hair when you had dyed it black.

The fact that your ID doesn't look like you at first glance should, rather perversly, make them look more closely asnd realise it IS you!!

The answer - technology. In the same way you can get dogs to smell for contraband a human can't smell, you can use computers to look at facial features or fingerprints or any other biometric to confirm the owner of the official document is the same person who applied for it.

You probably still need humans for that human insight of 'that just doesn't look right' but we should use more technology to remove the human error elements.