Passport: Don't leave home without it
By Alfred Borcover
Special to the Tribune
Published April 9, 2006
"An American passport is still the golden ticket, a ticket to freedom and opportunity."
--Liza Monroy of New York in a Newsweek essay
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0604080337apr09,1,3662807.story?coll=chi-travel-hed
THOUGHTS???
By Alfred Borcover
Special to the Tribune
Published April 9, 2006
"An American passport is still the golden ticket, a ticket to freedom and opportunity."
--Liza Monroy of New York in a Newsweek essay
.There's no doubt that the 3 1/2- by 5-inch blue book with the Great Seal of the United States emblazoned on its cover in gold is the best piece of identification an American can carry. At this moment, 68.2 million U.S. citizens out of nearly 300 million possess valid passports.
As the summer travel season fast approaches, millions more Americans planning trips overseas are scurrying to one of 7,000 passport acceptance facilities--local post offices, many federal, state and probate courts, a number of county and municipal offices, and 14 passport agency offices (by appointment only--see below*) throughout the U.S.--to apply for a passport or to renew one about to expire
SNIP
Starting this summer all applicants will be issued new, state-of-the-art electronic passports, a State Department official said. The new passport, the same size as the old one, has redesigned interior pages and a small integrated circuit, or chip, embedded in the back cover. The chip stores the same data that appears on the data page as well as a biometric identifier--a digital image of the passport photograph and a digital signature to protect the stored data from alteration.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/travel/chi-0604080337apr09,1,3662807.story?coll=chi-travel-hed
THOUGHTS???