Taiwan accidentally put Dulles Airport on its e-passports and Google Images could be why
Confusing a major American airport for a Taiwanese travel hub seems unlikely in official government documents, but that's exactly what happened with Taiwan's new e-passports.
An exterior shot of Washington Dulles International from the American capital made it onto the background of Taiwan's newly issued digital passports. It was supposed to be a shot of Taoyuan International Airport.
Here's the since-recalled passport:
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To be fair, a quick search in Google Images for the Taiwan airport brought up a Dulles photo mislabeled as Taoyuan. The fourth image looks like the image on the passport and comes from an article listing "10+ best airports to spend a long layover." No. 10 is Taiwan Taoyuan International with the Dulles image.
Apparently a passport designer "had mistakenly chosen a photo of Dulles to represent Taiwan's main gateway," Focus Taiwan reported.
The two airports look somewhat similar, but not identical. Viewing both from Google Street View shows how they could be mistaken, but also how different they look.
Taiwan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) announced the new biometric passports would be issued starting on Christmas Day. Its description of the "next-generation" passports included this: "the inner pages show background images of landmarks and cultural customs, all symbolic of a dynamic Taiwan."
With the American airport snuck in there, the agency quickly recalled the 285 that had already gone out by Tuesday. But it was too late to stop the presses -- 200,000 had already been printed.
Sasha is a news writer at Mashable's San Francisco office. She's an SF native who went to UC Davis and later received her master's from the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She's been reporting out of her hometown over the years at Bay City News (news wire), SFGate (the San Francisco Chronicle website), and even made it out of California to write for the Chicago Tribune. She's been described as a bookworm and a gym rat.
