Using the OTR plugin with Pidgin for verifying GPG public key fingerprints

[Robert J. Hansen]

> But all that aside, I'm pretty sure news reports, etc. of human traffickers, smugglers, spies, etc. all confirm the fact that national IDs such as passports can be forged and do in fact slip by immigration authorities pretty commonly.

Only because the news doesn't report on people who get arrested based on false identity documents.  By the very nature of journalism, it pays more attention to the extreme and the unusual than it does the mundane and humdrum.  If a madman shoots 14 people in a shopping mall in Oconomowoc, that's news: if 1,400 people die of cancer nationwide that day, it doesn't even get a mention.  Following the news would lead you to thinking you needed to buy body armor, not that you could stand to lose a few pounds and you should stop smoking.

Be careful about forming your opinions of normalcy from watching news reports.