Try applying for a U.S. passport using a counterfeit birth certificate. Give one location as a home address, and another as a permanent residence. Use someone else’s picture and a Social Security number that was issued just last year. Then, for good measure, use the name of someone who’s already dead. What do you think your chances of getting a valid passport would be? If the results of an undercover sting operation by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are any indication, your chances would be at least 3 in 7. Not bad odds.

As a way to check up on the State Department, the GAO used all these shady practices to apply for seven passports in different places. Three of the passports were issued, two were caught and recovered by the Passport Office after they were mailed out, and two were denied. In a classic understatement, GAO Managing Director Gregory Kutz said of the phony information given, “These were fraud indicators that should have been identified and questioned by State.” One would think.

In response to the GAO report, State Department Spokesman P.J. Crowley said they still have work to do but points out it issues 13 million passports a year and says there will be human error. All of this was aired in public Thursday before the Senate Judiciary Terrorism and Homeland Security Subcommittee chaired by Senator Ben Cardin, D-Md. As Cardin put it in his opening statement, “The integrity and security of the passport issuance process is extremely important because it can have a profound impact on the national security of the United States.”

Republican Senator John Kyl of Arizona put a finer point on the danger by raising the specter of 9/11. “It’s been a long time now but we tend to forget what happened back then and why it was that people could operate freely in this country-- because they had obtained fraudulent documents,” Kyl said.

This sting follows a similar operation two years ago. That time, the GAO was able to obtain four genuine passports using fake information. The State Department says it made some improvements in the wake of that investigation, including more fraud training and better information sharing with law enforcement and the Social Security Administration.

In her Senate testimony today, Brenda Sprague, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Passport Services, said this latest sting wasn’t as bad as it could have been. She acknowledged that “even one passport issued in error is too many,” but went on to maintain that lessons have been learned. “It was exactly the improvements which we put in place after the 2009 GAO operation that allowed us to recognize this operation before the GAO notified us.” The operation was exposed when passport officials used facial recognition technology to discover the same picture had been used on multiple applications. The picture was that of a GAO investigator.

While State says it improved it’s information sharing after the 2009 GAO probe, everyone agrees more needs to be done in that regard. Sprague says, “Our efforts to gain access to information are hampered because Consular Affairs is not considered a law enforcement entity for information sharing purposes. We need this designation.”

Cardin has introduced a bill that would give certain passport officials that new power to access criminal records databases. The bill would also increase the use of biometrics in the passport application process—especially facial recognition programs.

In the meantime, some national security danger may still lurk in the passport application and approval process, according to Kutz, who says, “People attempting to obtain a U.S. passport illegally are often seeking to use the guise of a U.S. citizen to conceal their involvement with more serious crimes, such as terrorism, narcotics trafficking, money laundering, and murder.”