British police are battling an outbreak of new fake ID mills, all powered by high quality color laser printers. They’ve shut down at least 20 “ID factories” over the last year and a half.

The criminals have put over 30,000 fake IDs into circulation, including driver licenses and national identity cards. And it’s not just underage pub crawlers at issue. The cards are used for such areas as immigration and benefits fraud, and used identities stolen from credit-card agencies and other compilers of personal data.

One big problem, according to police, is the lowered cots of the kind of color printer that can make excellent fakes. Instead of spending $6,000 or more for a high-precision printer, ID operations can buy them for $1,250 (₤750) or less. As a police spokesman said, “These machines can manufacture any form of ID card. The frightening thing is you can go on the internet and get all the computer bits you need to set up an ID factory in 24 hours”

Police are trying to work with vendors to keep them from selling high-quality color printers to criminals, but that seems a vain task, since counterfeiters can certainly make up documents that show them to be legitimate businesses.

If it’s happening in Britain, it’s happening even more in the US. That’s why pressure is growing for ID cards that have either embedded chips or some kinds of biometric identifier. There’s lots of potential opposition, both from the right and left, but the growth of such devices seems like the inevitable consequence of the ease of faking everyday IDs.

Tags: British police, fake IDs, printers