USA State Department suspends overseas passport/visa issue

[TheAppletons]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department has been forced to suspend the issuance of U.S. passports and visas at its overseas diplomatic missions due to a computer glitch that has hit one of its computer databases.

In a statement, the department said the hardware failure in its Consular Consolidated Database glitch has left overseas embassies and consulates unable to print visas, regular passports and other travel documents. The department said that people who submitted online applications for passports and visas on or after June 9 will likely experience delays in processing.

http://www.mcdowellnews.com/news/us/ap/state-dept-suspends-overseas-passport-visa-issuance/article_ecc493b5-3e05-50d3-90f8-62078d4f6269.html

[Jonathan Fairfield]

State Dept suspends overseas passport, visa issuance

The State Department said Friday it has been forced to suspend the issuance of U.S. passports and visas at its overseas diplomatic missions due to a glitch that has hit one of its computer databases.

In a statement posted to its travel.state.gov website, the department said a hardware failure in its Consular Consolidated Database glitch has left overseas embassies and consulates unable to print visas, regular passports and other travel documents. This means that people who submitted online applications for passports and visas on or after June 9 will likely experience delays in processing, it said.

The failure does not affect domestic passport issuance because it only stopped the database from receiving biometric information sent from overseas posts, the department said.

"We cannot bypass the legal requirements necessary to screen visa applicants before we issue visas for travel," it said. "As a result, there is a backlog of visas waiting to be processed. We are working as quickly as possible to resolve the issue and to clear the backlog."

"Security measures prevent consular officers from printing a passport, report of birth abroad or visa until the case completes the required national security checks," it said.

More details about the failure were not immediately available.

The consular database was taken down last July by another technical glitch that had the same effect but the department said the current issue is unrelated. The department said it was working "urgently to identify the problem and correct it."

"We expect the systems to be fully operational again soon," it said, but offered no timeline.

-- (c) Associated Press 2015-06-13

[FritsSikkink]

never heard of a backup system?

[phuketrichard]

i thought all US passports were issued now in the states?

mine that I just got in Feb was

[ubonjoe]

i thought all US passports were issued now in the states?

mine that I just got in Feb was

They are done in the states. But the problem appears to be that the embassies and consulates cannot submit the application.

The printing part may be emergency passports.

[Jeffrey346]

never heard of a backup system?

They are not talking PC's. It's a Mainframe or Mini. It's not cost effective to clone complete systems. I am sure the data is backed up..

[FritsSikkink]

never heard of a backup system?

They are not talking PC's. It's a Mainframe or Mini. It's not cost effective to clone complete systems. I am sure the data is backed up..

i worked in IT for 28 years, if the system is important you clone it

or you can restore it pretty quickly on new hardware

Edited June 13, 2015 by FritsSikkink

[lostoday]

Maybe they could hire a consultant from Thailand passport division for some help.

[BritTim]

never heard of a backup system?

They are not talking PC's. It's a Mainframe or Mini. It's not cost effective to clone complete systems. I am sure the data is backed up..

i worked in IT for 28 years, if the system is important you clone it

or you can restore it pretty quickly on new hardware

Agreed. Based on the limited information available in the press reports, I find it difficult to imagine scenarios that do not involve inadequate backup or a massive operational screw up or both. Normally, predictable problems in critical systems should be resolved within hours.

[Srikcir]

Maybe they can hire the Chinese to help.

They probably have already hacked and cloned the entire system already.

[JeffreyO]

never heard of a backup system?

They are not talking PC's. It's a Mainframe or Mini. It's not cost effective to clone complete systems. I am sure the data is backed up..

i worked in IT for 28 years, if the system is important you clone it

or you can restore it pretty quickly on new hardware

For someone who worked in IT for 28 years your jargon is a little questionable. You don't clone massive databases for purposes of failover, you replicate them. You replicate them because replication is live and any updates to system A automatically replicate to system B. If you cloned something it would simply be an image of what the drive was at the time of the clone.

Note, you do still make backups of DB's in case the failover clusters break and data becomes corrupted but that's a totally different can of worms.

MS Exchange DAG (mailbox databases) are replicated, SQL, MySQL, MSSQL, all replicated and upon failure, they failover to the replicated databases.

This doesn't sound like a database failure, rather, they said the database is unable to receive biometric information from overseas, it sounds more like a fault in the code and design of the system, a 'clone' of the system will not and would not resolve that as the failure would still exist.

Edited June 13, 2015 by JeffreyO

[HeijoshinCool]

This is odd … passports are still being printed, no problem, just of Khao San Road.

[chingching]

i worked in IT for 28 years, if the system is important you clone it

or you can restore it pretty quickly on new hardware

Sure , who is it important to? Important for the people needing a passport or visa. Not important for the Dept. of State

[lockman]

never heard of a backup system?

They are not talking PC's. It's a Mainframe or Mini. It's not cost effective to clone complete systems. I am sure the data is backed up..

Actually they are often "upgrading" these systems and getting rid of the old which never made sense to me as the data is usually stored separately. Yep old one might be a bit slower and not shiny new, nut why not keep that for a backup.

[ubonjoe]

US Embassy Bangkok issues update on delays in overseas U.S. passport and visa processing

BANGKOK:-- The Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs is currently experiencing technical problems with our overseas passport and visa systems.

This issue is not specific to any particular country, citizenship document, or visa category. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working urgently to correct the problem and restore full operability.

Passport applications accepted overseas or after May 26, 2015 are affected by this delay.

If you applied for a U.S. passport overseas during this time frame and have travel plans within the next 10 business days, please consider requesting an emergency passport at the U.S. Embassy or Consulate at which you originally applied.

Read more: http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/passports.html

Regarding Visas

The Department of State’s Bureau of Consular Affairs is currently experiencing technical problems with our overseas passport and visa systems.

This issue is not specific to any particular country, citizenship document, or visa category. We apologize for the inconvenience and are working urgently to correct the problem and restore full operability.

Applications for a U.S. visa made after June 8, 2015, are affected by this delay. Individuals with urgent travel should follow the instructions for expedited emergency appointments found on this website.

From visas page. http://bangkok.usembassy.gov/non-immigrant_visas.html

[islandguy]

Is the Embassy in Bangkok still processing requests for visas normally and just suffering a delay in issuing the visas or is the whole process stopped/slowed down?

[ubonjoe]

Is the Embassy in Bangkok still processing requests for visas normally and just suffering a delay in issuing the visas or is the whole process stopped/slowed down?

To make an application for a non-immigrant visa you have to do the application online and obtain an appointment. That is the part that has been effected.

It appears they are also having problems processing the online applications at the embassy.

[IMA_FARANG]

I guess I'm lucky then.

I received my new U.S. passport on 5 June..... with no problem.

I do not know.... but I suspect this has something to do with the recent large scale hacking of U.S. government data systems and the loss to hackers of many identity records in that incident.

Let's just say the integrity of many database records has been compromised.

.

[ubonjoe]

Two off topic nonsensical posts have been removed.