Camouflage passport

False identity document

A camouflage passport is a document, designed to look like a real passport, issued in the name of a non existent country or entity. It may be sold with matching documents, such as an international driver's license, club membership card, insurance documents or similar supporting identity papers. A camouflage passport is not a real, valid passport and is to be distinguished from a valid second passport, which an individual with dual citizenship may be eligible to hold, a novelty fantasy passport, or a fake of a real passport.

False identity documents have a long history, but in 1998, the idea of the camouflage passport was credited by the Financial Times to Donna Walker of Houston, who said she had got the idea ten years earlier when an American on a hijacked aircraft was shot because of his nationality. Walker said that she started by asking the Sri Lankan embassy whether they still had rights over the name Ceylon and, finding they did not, went on to ask the U. S. State Department whether producing a passport in that name would be legal, and they "couldn't show (her) it wasn't". Walker went on to produce hundreds of passports in different country names, trading as International Documents Service, and described her "finest hour" as being during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait when a group of European oil executives were able to use her documents to pass through Iraqi checkpoints and escape to Jordan. She said the basic idea was to look like "a not very interesting man from a not very interesting country".

In 2011, the European Union resolved that a "non exhaustive list of known fantasy and camouflage passports" should be drawn up that "should not be subject to recognition or non recognition. They should not entitle their holders to cross the external borders and should not be endorsed with a visa". A list was subsequently published and last updated in February 2023.

The producers of camouflage passports are generally internet based businesses that specialise in producing various types of identify documents that may be in real or false names. Other services often offered include offshore company formation, introductions to offshore banking and financial services providers and similar services all targeted at international mobile individuals and those interested in avoiding tax and government regulation. Despite several companies withdrawing from this market in recent years, others continue to operate, offering passports that purport to include UV tags and holograms for verisimilitude.