Tsunami creates ID fraud, claim

IN OUR first piece of PR spam this year, a Canadian security outfit has warned that thieves are picking through the decomposing bodies of the Asian Tsunami victims looking for the ingredients to make a good ID fraud.

Gieschen Consultancy offers no proof of its ghoulish claims. There are no news reports that this has happened yet, not even in the more imaginative tabloids.

The Gieschen press release also warned that terrorists or criminals could travel to a disaster area to claim they were a victim of the Tsunami for the purpose of obtaining government identification such as passports, drivers licences or birth certificate.

Given the number of people killed and identity documents lost or destroyed, a tremendous amount of time will be spent reissuing identification, which makes the task of verifying each persons identity difficult, the press release warned. This means that governments could give the wrong ID papers to terrorists or criminals just because they were at the right place at the right time.

Good point, but has it happened? Will it? According to Gieschen it may take weeks or months before any links between the Tsunami in Asia and identity theft and fraud are discovered.

Gieschen provides counterfeit intelligence analysis and security research relating to documents, products and intellectual property. We might be being cynical here, but we wonder whether Gieschen has any evidence of this "danger" at all. µ