U.S. border agents have been screwing up passport security for over a decade, Senate Democrats say

For more than a decade, the government has turned to high-tech e-Passports as a fast, secure way to process travelers who arrive in the U.S. without a visa, but there's a problem: the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) “lacks the technical capability to verify e-Passport chips” according to a Thursday letter sent to the agency by two Democratic senators.

Translation: potentially millions of travelers using the technology were not properly vetted by the CBP, creating an opening for wide-scale passport fraud.

“Specifically, CBP cannot verify the digital signatures stored on the e-Passport, which means that CBP is unable to determine if the data stored on the smart chips has been tampered with or forged,” wrote Oregon’s Ron Wyden and Missouri’s Claire McCaskill. “CBP has been aware of this security lapse since at least 2010, when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report highlighting the gap in technology.”

Despite that previously identified “gap,” the agency pushed more responsibility onto the high-tech ID in 2015, requiring all visitors from countries on the visa-waiver list use an e-Passport. More than 23 million travelers visited the U.S. last year through the visa-waiver program, which allows visitors from select countries to stay up to 90 days in the U.S. for business or tourism without getting a visa.

The senators have requested that CBP immediately determine “the true cost” of developing or purchasing the necessary technology, and implement such a plan to authenticate e-Passports by not later than January 1, 2019.

CBP spokesperson Jennifer Gabris told VICE News over email that she is looking into the issue.

E-Passports’ smart chips, used to detect fraud and other passport interference, were first introduced in 2006 and more than 120 countries have adopted them over the past 12 years.

The U.S. government’s drive to require them worldwide began in 2002, as part of a larger wave of border security legislation after the September 11, which saw the creation of CBP’s parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.