The Passport reference article from the English Wikipedia on 24-Apr-2004
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Passport

A British passportEnlarge

A British passport

A passport is a document that identifies the holder as a citizen of a particular country, and requests permission in the name of the sovereign or government of the issuing country for the bearer to be permitted to enter and pass through the country. It contains a passport photograph, a signature and sometimes other means of recognition of human individuals.

Passports are usually necessary for international travel, as it normally needs to be shown at a country's border. It may be stamped or sealed with visass issued by the host country authorizing entry.

Some governments try to control the movements of their own and other citizens. For example, many Muslim countries* will not allow entry to people with an Israeli visa in their passport, and it is illegal for US citizens to visit Cuba. (To help foreigners get around these restrictions, Israel and Cuba do not require visitors to have their passports stamped upon entry, making it difficult for Muslim nations or the US to tell if their citizens broke the law by visiting those countries.)

Sometimes countries have a reciprocal agreement that a visa is not needed under certain conditions, e.g. that the visit is for tourism and not for longer than three months. No visa is required for travelling between European Union countries, where citizens of EU member states have full freedom of movement and work.

A few countries have agreements allowing for cross-border travel without passports (but with identification). These include the EU countries of the Schengen Group, the United States, Canada and Mexico, and the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland.

In most European countries, the passport belongs to the citizen, who has a right to travel to any country that will accept him or her. The only exception is that passports may have to be temporarily surrendered by people on bail and awaiting trial if there is a risk that they might abscond.

The situation is different in some countries such as the United States (where only about a quarter of citizens have a passport anyway) which hold that the passport is state property which may be withdrawn at any time. A United States passport reads "U.S. Government Property: This passport is the property of the United States Government. Upon demand made by an authorized representative of the United States Government, it must be surrendered." Other countries with such policies include Thailand and Malaysia. Prominent people with left-wing views, such as Paul Robeson, had once been prevented from traveling abroad by this method by the US government. However, the US Supreme Court held in the 1958 Kent v. Dulles case that the right to travel was an inherent right which could not be denied to American citizens.

As identifying documents, passports are frequent subjects of theft and forgery. See Sealand.

(*)These countries are known to not accept Israeli passports

For Microsoft's "universal login" service, see Microsoft Passport.