"You need to show a Real ID for security, otherwise how do we know you won't hijack the plane?"
"Well I don't have a Real ID."
"Ok then, give us $45 and you can go through."
So it was never about security at all then, was it?
And don't get me started with all the paid express security lanes. Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.
Never was.
I flew every other week prior to covid and haven't once been through the scanners. For the first ~6 years, I opted out and got pat down over and over again.
Then I realized I could even skip that.
Now at the checkpoint, I stand at the metal detector. When they wave me to the scanner, I say "I can't raise my arms over my head." They wave me through the metal detector, swab my hands, and I'm done. I usually make it through before my bags.
Sometimes, a TSA moron asks "why not?" and I simply say "are you asking me to share my personal healthcare information out loud in front of a bunch of strangers? Are you a medical professional?" and they back down.
Other times, they've asked "can you raise them at least this high?" and kind of motion. I ask "are you asking me to potentially injure myself for your curiosity? are you going to pay for any injuries or pain I suffer?"
The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security.
To a great extent, it is security, even if it's mostly security theater, in the sense that it is security theater that people want.
A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where somebody felt uncomfortable boarding a plane because they saw the screening agent asleep at the desk. Pro-tip, trying to explain security theater to the concerned passenger is not the right solution at this point ;-)
Even Bruce Schneier, who coined the term "security theater" has moderated his stance to acknowledge that it can satisfy a real psychological need, even if it's irrational.
We may be more cynical and look upon such things with disdain, but most people want the illusion of safety, even if deep down they know it's just an illusion.
I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing.
Anyway, such major population-wide measures shouldn’t be about stopping people being “uncomfortable” - they should be about minimising risk, or not at all. If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt.
What I’m trying to say is that , while a lot of it is theater, TSA may be more effective security against foreigners but you as a resident don’t notice because you can opt out. Try going to the UK and telling them you can’t raise your arms while being a US citizen.
This was the only time I've gone through the machine since they were introduced.
> Random selection by our screening technology prevents terrorists from attempting to defeat the security system by learning how it operates. Leaving out any one group, such as senior citizens, persons with disabilities, or children, would remove the random element from the system and undermine security. We simply cannot assume that all terrorists will fit a particular profile.
I don't know the specifics of the process for selection, but I can confidently say that the process is bigoted.
(obstinately or unreasonably attached to a belief, opinion, or faction, in particular prejudiced against or antagonistic towards a person or people on the basis of their membership of a particular group)
The Rehat Maryada would suggest that is in no way whatsoever an unreasonable suspicion.
Sure, your manager likely didn't carry one on airplanes .. but that still falls short of being an unreasonable check.
> There's no reason to think that Sikhs are explicitly going out of their way to hide something.
... other than a small, curved sword or dagger that initiated (Amritdhari) Sikhs are required to wear at all times as one of the Five Ks (articles of faith) ordained by Guru Gobind Singh in 1699 you mean?
It seems reasonable, and a number of actual Sikh's would actually agree, to guess that a Sikh who holds their faith to be a matter of importance would absolutely hide a symbolic dagger the size of a letter opener and capable of slitting a throat.
The question facing any border agent tasked with checking Sikh's, of course, is this specific Sikh one that will always try to carry a Kiran, or one that doesn't hold with all that articles of faith guff.
They always had a pass here in Australia for many years until things tightened up.
Not that I'm a fan, but in general Rules are Rules and making exceptions while fair in some senses will be unfair in others <shrug>.
Circling back to my initial comment- it is the case that there is an actual reason rather than a made up bit of bullshit, to reasonably suspect that a Sikh might be carrying a knife ... if they are they're almost certain to also have a comb .. so that's handy.
Whenever we travelled to offsite offices Mohammed 100% of the time was picked for bag check, while Kevin was not picked once.
Mohammed was white, and Kevin was black.
It was completely racist, and never random.
It may be a racist result but there is a pretty reasonable and understandable reason it happens, ignoring the legality and morality of that kind of tracking as well.
I was then subjected to full pat down and a shoe chemical test as a cherry on top.
Might need to try convincing them next time to let me do the metal detector instead.
What's the point of this higher fidelity scanner if it can't tell the difference between a fly and a restricted object?
Whenever my backpack has been pulled aside for various reasons (large metal tools, too many loose wires, water bottle), I'll often get the bomb sniffer wipe.
I always say "my penis" and they say "uh.. well.. I'm not going to touch that"
Me: "When you slide your hand up until you meet resistance? That resistance is my penis. You're going to touch my penis and it's a sensitive area."
I fly next week, I will have to decide whether having this conversation is worth not trying to get out of the opt-out procedure. The difficulty will be keeping a straight face.
I used to "punish" the rude or particularly slow ones by insisting on a private screening (since that involves two officers, and Is A Whole Thing) but I haven't gotten a rude one in a few years. But that also just makes it take even longer.
IANAL but I would be very cautious about lying to a federal agent, or anyone acting in a capacity on behalf of a federal agent (this is all of TSA).
From what I see, it's low risk, though the parent's smartass approach might get you some punishment. Not worth skipping the detector via lie.
> Then I realized I could even skip that.
It would make sense that you weren’t injuring yourself prior to realizing this.
Again, implied. But agreed, you didn’t say it.
You're thinking of being interviewed by a Federal agent. At no point are you being interviewed at a TSA checkpoint. Generally, they have two agents present for that so they can act as witnesses for each other. The FBI specifically uses the 302 for such an interview. Can you cite the relavant US Code here? I can.
Further, you're assuming I'm lying.
As someone who was present (in the room) as DHS was being formed and witnessed the negotiations around the TSA, the "really shitty, anti-social behavior" is sharing misinformation.
Does it make you feel good to participate in a meaningless charade of security theater? Or would you rather spend your time doing some of value?
I think there is a lot of value in being part of a democratic society that has structured dispute-resolution processes. Part of the cost of that is occasionally going along with something pointless (even if some things warrant civil disobedience, not everything does), and that's a vital democratic responsibility. So yes, I do feel good doing that - the same kind of good I feel when I pick up someone else's litter or give up my time for jury service. If anything, going along with a law you disagree with is harder, and more virtuous, than those.
Most people I know who object to full-body millimeter-wave scanners either do so on pseudoscientific health claims, or “philosophical” anti-scanner objections that are structurally the same genre as sovereign-citizen or First-Amendment-auditor thinking.
Unless you want to!
The first time I visited a different country I was surprised to see my friend accompany me to the check-in counter and even further to drop me off. In India they wouldn't let you enter the airport if your flight doesn't depart soon enough.
Now you can escort someone to the check-in counter and up to the security checkpoint, and meet people at the luggage area to help with bags.
But in practice it seems rare to do so if there isn’t a particular reason, probably because you’d have to pay to park or ride transit and it’s usually a trek beyond that. Honestly if they allowed you to go through security with the passenger and wait at the gate, I’m not sure how many people would even do it here (or how many passengers would want their loved ones to do so).
I could imagine other conditions potentially but pacemakers have been ruled a non issue for mmWave by academic studies (albeit I can understand still exercising caution despite that).
Also I kinda like the process better; the pat-down is nothin', and you can a full table to yourself to recombobulate.
> First-Amendment-auditor thinking.
Uhhh, I like that kind of thinking. Is there something wrong with first amendment auditors now?!
Cute analogy, but.
Handicap parking tags provide value to those who need them. Depriving them of parking makes their lives harder.
On the other hand, TSA is pure theater, as TFA makes clear. Avoiding this needless ritual saves time for the passenger, for the TSA officers, even for the other passengers, and does not increase risk at all. It's pure win-win.
Dealing with the presence of travelers who haven't updated their driver's licenses requires a bunch of extra staff to perform the time-consuming additional verifications. The basic idea is for those staff to be paid by the people using them, rather than by taxpayers and air travelers more generally. As well as there being a small deterrent effect.
This is just a way to compel compliance and to push the agenda for ID with higher documentary requirements, ultimately to deny the vote.
...The courts have repeatedly struck down limits on domestic travel over the
past couple hundred years.
In fact, the $45 "fee" is an acknowledgment that you aren't required to have
special documents to travel within the US. Otherwise, they just wouldn't let
you travel.
So instead, they're making more security theater and punishing you if you
don't comply with their demands...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46864182
It's absolutely not just enhanced physical screening.
They can't detain you (if you're not otherwise some kind of suspect, and you're not trying to assault them or sprint past security or anything), but they don't let you fly.
I mean, I know you're right, and I know you will always lose if you try, but I don't understand the legal basis.
Whether they can then elect to stay is a different matter, I think.
But so what? How long would a person have to stand in a screening area before someone who properly represents the ownership of that space shows up and authoritatively tells them to GTFO, do you suppose?
Cities don't own restaurants either but can fine them and close them if health inspections fail, because there's a law for that.
The legal basis is the federal laws written specifically around airport security.
If they have to perform extra work then I'd say it's justified. If it's just a punishment for not getting a real ID I'm not sure if that's fair
Those that did had to pay $30-$60 plus fees (actual cost differs by state) to get one and will have to pay that again and again each renewal. This is certainly making money somewhere for somebody and not at all about security
It then goes on to explain that the TSA has reported 93% of traveler's complied with REAL ID, citing a TSA blog from a week prior which in fact states the same.
They then take this and couple it with a single day, which they state was the busiest travel day of the Memorial Day weekend, and extrapolate that 7% of the travelers that day must've failed to provide a REAL ID.
For the sake of conversation, this is a reasonable statement. Going back and using it to suggest 200k fly without it on a typical day is not reasonable, nor is your suggestion that a 6 months later it's still at 7% (or even typical travel volume hasn't changed.) There has to be better data available.
I was curious about this, so I looked up travel volume. YTD the daily average is 2,130,136 passengers. At 7%, this is 149,109.5 passengers or $2.449 B a year in fees. This ignores that you only pay the fee once very 10 days and assumes that all travelers pay the fee on every occurrence.
I think New York is one, so well over 10mill people don’t require it. Do you seriously think most of those people are getting one anyway? Guarantee you there are millions of people without it if not tens of millions. I’d put money on it.
So back to the point, we’re talking likely 100’s of millions of dollars. That is nothing to sneeze at. The TSA is an $11bill operation based on a quick search. $500mill (~11mill people) would be 5% of their annual budget.
That's the point. It's not to make money. The primary purpose is to get people to use RealID, and to cover the costs of the extra screening for those who don't. For however much more money they take in, you need to subtract the cost of the additional staff they need to hire and pay to handle it, plus the tech systems.
Also, remember you can just use a passport instead. That hasn't changed.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/real-id-deadline-weeks-away-mos...
I personally have a hard time believing that a “Real” ID that does not verify citizenship or residency is meaningfully different from my current one. I certainly do not believe there are increased costs associated with my existing ID, that would be alleviated with a Real ID. At no point have I ever heard Real ID exists to reduce costs (though if that’s true, I’d love to read how). IMHO it may not be a “cash grab,” but it’s certainly punitive. And, for what it’s worth, there have been no extra steps I’ve had to take or increased screening when using my existing ID for the past year. Same photo machine, same scanner, as everyone else.
I will personally just renew my passport to avoid the fee until I need to renew my drivers license.
I guess that's because you haven't renewed your driver's license yet?
I did last year, precisely because I had to fly, and had to bring a bunch of new documentation I never needed for my previous driver's licenses, including, yes, multiple proofs of both citizenship and residency, and then had to go through a whole additional process because of a slight name discrepancy between documents that they had to get a supervisor to make a judgment call on. It's a totally different verification process that is actually quite meaningfully different.
https://reason.com/2025/12/31/dhs-says-real-id-which-dhs-cer...
> I personally have a hard time believing that a “Real” ID that does not verify citizenship or residency is meaningfully different from my current one.
You seem to have conveniently forgotten that residency was part of the discussion. DHS hasn't contested REAL ID as a means to verify your identity or your residency. They have contested it as a means to verify your citizenship and they are correct because it was never intended to be proof of citizenship or legal residency status.
You do need to show your residency paperwork or prove citizenship when applying as only lawfully present residents are eligible to receive a REAL ID, but only citizens and permanent residents have indefinite legal status and REAL ID doesn't track your status.
I would argue this is a silly gap, but Congress intentionally did not establish a National ID which you would expect to identify nationality. Instead, they created a system which makes it difficult to create ID in multiple states concurrently or under multiple names.
I would further argue that the database required to make REAL ID work ends up with all of the negatives of a national ID, without the most useful benefits. So really, we all lose.
It's absolutely a totally different and much stricter vetting process from before. Whether you or some other government agency thinks it still doesn't go far enough is a separate question.
Also almost half the population flies annually, so we’re starting around 150mill.
You need numbers at this point. I am willing to bet millions flying don’t have it.
Here’s an article from April 2025: https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/real-id-deadline-may/
Now TSA is offering an ultimatum. Pay $45 once to renew your ID or pay it every time you travel. For most people this is enough motivation to renew the ID and never think about it again.
FTFY
They've been trying to push this BS for over a decade but some of the states haven't been adopting it the way they'd like. The threats to ban travel without one were ultimately toothless as there would have been far too much backlash (and that would presumably be unconstitutional). This is what they figure they can get away with.
> the remaining stragglers simply don't care because there have never been any consequences
The default ID that my state issues has historically not been RealID compliant and I think that's a good thing. I have no interest in actively participating in the latest authoritarian overreach attempt.
That's madness.
For the $45 I should get a "TSA ID" that lets me fly for a year. That would be a cash grab. They don't even care enough to do that. They want to blur the line between state and federal and they're going to use your need to fly to accomplish that.
I don’t think the existence of the fine itself is necessarily evidence of a cash grab.
If it isn’t temporary and extends beyond a year or two, then it probably is just meant to be a cash grab.
And since Congress never approved it, well, that makes it illegal.
It wasn't just pay for play! TSA-PreCheck and Global Entry approval requires a thorough background check of your residential, work, and travel history, also in-person interview. Unfortunately, some Privacy activists prefer not doing that over occasional convenience.
Now! But, when it started it definitely required.
The whole debate is hilarious, you need one or two extra documents to get RealID. The exact same amount of time and trips to DMV.
Rich people just print out some combination of a bank statement, a pay stub, and a copy of their mortgage or lease or the electric bill, but poor people may not have much of that. Think of someone staying with family and getting paid by a gig economy job to a Cash App card or just working under the table/doing odd jobs.
Once you start with less common documents, there seem to be more arcane rules, and the documents poor people do have often don’t quite fit the rules that were basically written around what people middle class and up are likely to have.
Are these the same poor people that reputedly cannot get IDs to vote because of a government conspiracy to suppress their votes, yet can afford an airline ticket and commute to an airport?
That's why if you don't have an ID, you should get to the airport at least an hour earlier than otherwise (already accounting for long security lines), and more during peak travel times. If you get slowed down, you're going to miss your flight. They're not going to speed it up for you.
That's what they're guarding against. There's is no secure enough visual or computational ID check that takes a second when you're not already carrying a RealID or passport, that's the point. They have to start getting a bunch of information from databases, determining if it seems like a real person, and quizzing you on information you should know if you're the real you, and seeing if it all adds up or not.
It does take longer than regular screening (most of the time was just spent waiting for the supervisor -- I'm not sure they were spending time collecting some data first), if that causes you to miss your flight you miss your flight.
It seems plausible to me that $45 could be about a TSA employee's wage times how much longer this takes. In aggregate, this (in theory) lets them hire additional staff to make sure normal screening doesn't take longer due to existing staff being tied up in extra verifications.
Though they might not do that either.
1. They're not doing screening. The screening comes later. At this stage, they're attempting to identify someone. That has never been the job. The job is to prevent guns, knives, swollen batteries, or anything else that could be a safety threat during air travel.
2. Regardless, the reality is that they do identify travelers. Even so, the job has not changed. If you don't present sufficient identification, they will identify you through other mechanisms. The only thing the new dictate says is that they don't want this document, they want that document.
A job that by their own internal testing, they do well less than 5% of the time (some of their audits showed that 98% of fake/test guns that were sent through TSA got through checkpoints).
Thats why cashless businesses exist, why you pay more for things that involve human attention instead of automated online solutions etc.
https://www.clearlypayments.com/blog/interchange-fees-by-cou...
or tax fraud, otherwise cashless is obviously cheaper
It's a proof of an address, akin to soviet-style "propiska", which was very important and hard to get without (it also affected ownership/inheritance).
What's more fun is that even though they accept different types of residence, they mostly trust utility bills -- but to set up utilities on your name even for your personal home utility company will ask a lot of documents, including credit score checks.
I personally felt that it's utility companies who do the heavy proof checking, not DMVs.
The US currently has freedom of movement. You don't need the government's permission to live somewhere or to move somewhere else. An ID with your address listed isn't propiska. At best, you could compare it to the 'internal passport' that the USSR and most post-Soviet countries had, which acted as a comprehensive identity document and was the ancestor to modern national ID cards that are used in many countries.
- Bank statement
- Pay stub
- Utility bill
- Any other state ID with the same last name, which I can claim is my parent or spouse.
I can change my mailing address on any of them with a few clicks online, no actual verification needed.
What they do NOT accept as proof of address:
- My passport
How does that make any sense?
> - Pay stub
> - Utility bill
It should be noted, and I don't understand why people aren't angry about this: Account numbers unredacted on the statements. The numbers are redacted the documentation gets rejected.
It makes sense because, if you look closely, you will see that your passport does not indicate your address.
But it’s totemic when you dig into conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants voting. RealID comes up a lot.
I've moved several times since getting my Colorado driver's license (a REAL ID). Technically, you are supposed to submit a change-of-address form to the DMV online within 30 days of moving. They don't send you a new card when you do that; the official procedure is to stick a piece of paper with your new address written on it to your existing ID yourself, and then just wait until your next renewal to actually get a card with the new address on it. The change of address form does not require utility bills or any other proof of the new address-- that's only required when you initially get the driver's license.
Could the $45 be a way to pay for some extra manual screening? Maybe? Or do they not deserve any benefit of the doubt.
That means the TSA can do whatever it can get away with labeling “screening.” It doesn’t matter that Congress didn’t specifically require showing IDs. That’s just one possible way of doing “screening.” Under the statute, the TSA is not required to do screening any particular way.
> The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), which is set law, provides a “complete defense” against any penalty for failing to respond to any collection of information by a Federal agency that hasn’t been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), isn’t accompanied by a valid PRA notice, or doesn’t display a valid OMB Control Number.
As the article works through, as a Federal Agency the TSA cannot just label stuff "screening" and demand money, or at least, they can't do so and then make you pay it.
Well apparently Congress passed a law that said TSA could just demand money as long as they published a notice in the federal register.
It is just "notice" of their intention to do it. They still have to do the other pieces, including getting their OMB control number.
Of course, as the article points out, all of this is pretty moot, if they're going to get the police to drag you away and not let you fly, irrespective of the position in law.
> (4) Screening defined .— In this subsection the term “screening” means a physical examination or non-intrusive methods of assessing whether cargo poses a threat to transportation security.
You should consider reading what you posted.
If you scroll down and look at it in context, that definition is under section (g): "Air Cargo on Passenger Aircraft".
And of course passengers aren't cargo.
Actually it does matter. Chevron deference is gone. If Congress didn't specifically approve this method, it's not legal
"In fact, the TSA does not require, and the law does not authorize the TSA to require, that would-be travelers show any identity documents. According to longstanding practice, people who do not show any identity documents travel by air every day – typically after being required to complete and sign the current version of TSA Form 415 and answer questions about what information is contained in the file about them obtained by the TSA from data broker Accurint…."
https://papersplease.org/wp/2020/05/19/tsa-tries-again-to-im...
https://papersplease.org/wp/2024/03/18/buses-trains-and-us-d...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_movement_under_Unit...
The fourth amendment:
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And no, you cannot convince me that searching families flying to see grandma for Christmas is a "reasonable search".
Also, the question has been largely sidestepped by the fact that travelers consent to search by voluntarily proceeding into the secure (airside) area of the airport, and there are usually--if not always--signs at the TSA screening point that say so. It’s not like you’re being involuntarily searched at the check-in desk.
Now we could argue that this isn’t a desirable way to do things but I don’t how it would violate the fourth amendment.
>A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
"shall not be infringed" and "shall not be violated" do not leave loopholes. It's quite clear.
>"shall not be infringed" and "shall not be violated" do not leave loopholes. It's quite clear.
Which one are you?
Of course that promptly shifts the potential for abuse in the other direction. Supposedly, democracy is the control over that. If they are abusing their office, you vote them out. (Or you vote out the elected official supervising them, such as a mayor or sheriff.)
It actually does work out most of the time. The cases of abuse are really few and far between. But in a country of 300 million, "few and far between" is somebody every single day, and a decent chance that it's you at some point.
That said, it should be zero, and there's good reason to think that for every offender you see there are dozens or hundreds of people complicit in allowing it. The theory I outlined above can only handle so many decades of concerted abuses before they become entrenched as part of the system. At which point it may be impossible to restore it without resetting everything to zero and starting over.
How? If they're doing their jobs, then they are in the right and would be defended by their agency. If they are doing something illegal, they'd be in trouble. But that's the point!
Ugh.
I think ICE has clearly demonstrated that this is not true
So, Frommers should fund a test case.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
No, it is to make it safe for any reason, which goes beyond whether or not they brought box cutters.
In effect that tracks who is going where.
Also, every four years? Elections happen more or less constantly in this country at some level or another. Federal elections are every two years, BTW, and that's if we ignore special elections for federal candidates. You should learn more about the system you live in.
The current round of stop-and-search would be enabled by making passport cards or some form of universal id. The current legal reality is that you do not need to prove your citizenship on demand if you are already in the US as a citizen. The burden of proof - rightly in my opinion - lies with the government to prove that you are not a citizen. Frankly, I'm quite uncomfortable with "paper's please" entering the US law enforcement repertoire. The fourth amendment was pretty clear about this.
With the CBP using mere presence validated by facial id only at legally protected protests as reason to withdraw Global Entry enrollment, it seems more and more clear that we do not need to be giving more power to the people who do not understand the 4th and first amendments. Removing people from Global Entry for protected first speech is, afaict, directly in violation of the first amendment even if Global Entry is a "privilege"
And while they’re at it, provide an electronic money account that allows for free and instant transfers.
But then how would we waste so many societal resources letting investors profit from basic infrastructure?
That, and Millenarian Christians would object to its being a required "mark of the beast." That bit from Revelations has held us back for quite a while.
Gasp! Checking for IDs while voting is fascist! It's like Germany 1937.
Edit: I'm wrong.
None in the mid-Atlantic or SE that I've seen. Some states offer free gov docs under limited programs, eg:unaccompanied homeless youth.
(1) https://www.pa.gov/agencies/dmv/resources/payments-and-fees
(2) Applewhite v. Commonwealth https://pubintlaw.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Voter-ID-Fi...
All 50 states and 5 US territories issue RealID compliant drivers license/ID
This is like the folks who say flying is more carbon friendly than driving. It's wrong, you're comparing a vehicle running cost with one passenger vs a full vehicle normalized by its capacity.
No one flies 30 mi commutes.
Few drive 600+ mi empty or alone.
Is there a study on this? As I would have thought the opposite and would bet that the number driving alone is increasing as more people live alone.
But a lot of the working poor have families and travel to/from places that aren't major metro areas, and this can change the math really fast.
Where is that? I’m curious.
Around here, RealID is just what you’re issued when you renew various forms of ID. I don’t even recall an option to get a non-RealID version.
It's pragmatic to have: plenty of people don't or can't fly, and the cost of supporting this option is marginal.
https://dol.wa.gov/driver-licenses-and-permits/driver-licens...
What he really means is illegals who have fake ids who now can't get RealIDs.
The California example makes sense. They aren't asking a question that would lead to the admission of a crime. The IRS example doesn't make sense, since they are asking a question that would lead to the admission of a crime. Even if the answer was legally protected, a government who does not respect the law (or one that changes the law) could have nasty repercussions.
So I told them the sign above me said it was.
So she lied and told me my ID had to be issued within the past year (mine was 14 mo. old).
So I asked to speak to her manager.
So she told me to step aside and lied that she'd call her manager.
After waiting five minutes looking at her not call the manager, I started whistling the anthem, loudly, at a crowded major city airport.
The manager rushed over.
He asked what the problem was, and asked to see my ID. So he sounded it into the scanner triggering my picture.
He pretended that that was a mistake. So I told him he was really cute piece of work.
I filled a complaint with the TSA.
They answered that they took the incident very seriously and never followed up.
- ID photo is x years out of date
- old identifying info + new identifying info is more valuable than just old identifying info
- if it really doesn't matter, then why do they need to collect it? they can just not collect it, since it doesn't matter.
It doesn't even save time, in fact it takes more time screwing around with the camera
What problem is any of this solving?
It used to cost $10 for a replacement ID printed in the DMV. Now I pay $25 for a third-party vendor to line their pockets and mail me a new ID weeks later!
Bush should have _NEVER_ nationalized them, at least as a private entity they existed in a sorta gray area. Now they are clearly violating the 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 10th amendments.
And the solution isn't another bullshit supreme court amendment of the absolutist language in the bill of rights/etc but to actually have a national discussion about how much safety the are providing vs their cost, intrusiveness, etc and actually find enough common ground to amend the constitution. Until then they are unconstitutional and the court makes a mockery of itself and delgitimizes then entire apparatus in any ruling that doesn't tear it down as such.
And before anyone says "oh thats hard", i'm going to argue no its not, pretty much 100% of the country could agree to amend the 2nd to ban the private ownership of nuclear weapons, there isn't any reason that it shouldn't be possible to get 70% support behind some simple restrictions "aka no guns, detected via a metal detector on public airplanes" passed. But then the agency wouldn't be given free run to do whatever the political appointee of the week feels like. But there are "powers" that are more interested in tracking you, selling worthless scanners, and creating jobs programs for people who enjoy feeling people up and picking through their dirty underwear.
The sum total of these "common sense" exceptions, and the "legal reasoning" that extends them to the modern world, means that the document itself doesn't actually mean anything. Your rights, such as they are, consist of literally millions of pages of decisions, plus the oral tradition passed down in law schools.
Put another way, Writs of Assistance, were perfectly legal common sense way for the British government to assure their customs laws were being enforced, and it was one of the more significant drivers of the revolution.
But fun fact: even if an ID is on that list, if it's not one that their little scanner machines know how to read, then it's effectively not on that list. I've been hassled every single time I try to use my TWIC card at TSA, and they invariably demand to use my (non-REAL) driver's license, since their dumb scanners can manage to read that one. They often then have the gall to give me one of their "You need to have a REAL ID" pamphlets. I can't wait to see what happens next time I travel with this new fee in effect.
If we are forced RealID, why not just make all the TSA checkpoints like Global Entry (or in several countries with IDs), fully automate them, using Real ID. That would get rid of CLEAR, and a lot of TSA agents.
CLEAR is basically (mostly) self-service pre-verification by a commercial entity, achieves near the same exact thing as it is done at the TSA agent with RealID now.
The CLEAR system uses CAT or CAT-2 to send info to TSA to validate. Same, exact protocol and information as it is with the TSA Agent.
The only meaningful difference is that the biometrics is pre-stored with CLEAR, while the other travelers are collected at the TSA agent stands and compared to RealID.
There are multiple countries where all of this is done with dark technomagic. You can see this witchcraft working with Global Entry (CBP, not TSA).
What is interesting about this is that CLEAR has a relationship with the airports (mostly), not TSA. Airports are the ones pushing CLEAR so they do not have insane queues, not TSA.
Wait till you see PreCheck Touchless ID.
The airlines don't even check ID most of the time with these electronic boarding passes if your not checking luggage.
They do check your ID for international flights
Public carriers like airlines are not allowed to refuse service for the reason of refusing to show ID.
They can refuse for other reasons, but the are not “in the loop” when passengers currently get screened by the TSA, which is where RealID is “required”.
Before entering the porno scanners I put everything in my pockets on the scanner belt, and they didn't bother to pat me down. YMMV.
That’s all well and fine, but airlines have the discretion to refuse to board passengers, including for potential security risks.
So yeah, there are no laws saying you have to provide ID, but that doesn’t mean you’ll get to board the plane.
What can we do to get there? Is anybody organizing?
I want to open my wallet. Where can I donate?
It ties into why we still have to register for the draft (despite not having a draft since the 70s, and being no closer to instituting one than any other western country), and why our best form of universal identification (the Social Security card) is a scrap of cardstock with the words "not to be used for identification" written on it.
So, there's no universal ID, it's illegal to mandate people have ID, and freedom of movement within the United States has been routinely upheld as a core freedom. Thus, no ID required for domestic flights.
But this does not have to be a federal ID. Could be just any ID.
I'm from a 3rd world country and we have a national id, the usa is weird in the strangest things.
The only exception would be airports solely for things other than commercial flights, like hobbyist pilots/flight schools where people are flying their own planes, or airports serving only government/medical/whatever "essential" traffic. Airports that don't have TSA-staffed security are still under TSA jurisdiction, and have to pass regular inspections by TSA to ensure their own security's at a sufficient level.
To be honest the worry about terrorists hijacking planes under Clinton proved to be quite prescient only a few years later.
For those that don't know, Chevron deference was a legal doctrine established by the Supreme Court in the US in the 1980s that basically said that there is ambiguity in law, the courts need to defer to the agencies responsible for enforcing that law. Different agencies handled this differently. In some cases, they established their own courts. These aren't ARticle 3 courts in the Constitutional sense like Federal courts are but because of Chevron deference they had a lot of power.
There was a lot of good reason for this. Government is complex and Congress simply does not have the bandwidth to pass a law every time the EPA wants to, say, change the levels of allowed toxins in drinking water. Multiple that by the thousands of functions done by all these agencies. It simply doesn't work.
So for 40 years Congress under administrations of both parties continued to write law with Chevron deference in mind. Laws were passed where the EPA, for example, would be given a mandate to make the air or water "clean" or "safe" and that agency would then come up with standards for what that meant and enforce it.
Politically however, overturning Chevron has been a goal of the conservative movement for decades because, basically, it reduces profits. Companies want to be able to pollute into the rivers and the air without consequence. They don't like that some agency has the power to enforce things like this. The thinking went that if they overturned Chevron deference then it would give the power to any Federal court to issue a nationwide injunction against whatever agency action or rule they don't like. They standard for being to do that under Chevron was extremely high.
Defenders will argue that agencies are overstepping constitutional bounds and that vague statues aren't the answer. Congress must be clear. But they know that can't happen because of the complexity and that's the point. They don't want complexity. All those "legal" reasons are an excuse. Proftis are the reason.
Anyway, they succeeded and now agencies are governemend by what's called the Administrative Procedures Act ("APA") instead. Companies and the wealthy people who owned them celebrated this as a win but I don't think they understand what they've done.
You see, there are complex rules under the APA about the process by which an agency has to go through to make a rule or policy change and, from waht I can tell and what I've read online, most of them aren't doing it correctly or at all. They seem to operate under the belief that overturning Chevron means they can do whatever they want.
So the TSA is a government agency. If they want to add a fee like this well, you need to ask if that's a major rule change. If so, there are procedures for comment periods, review, etc. If these aren't strictly followed, you can simply go into court and say "the TSA didn't follwo procedure" and the courts can issue a nationwide injunction until the matter is resolved and if there was any technical violation of the APA policy change procedure, the entire thing can get thrown out.
So if anyone doesn't like what this administration is doing and wants to take legal action to block it, they should probably look to the APA and see if they can block it on technical grounds. I suspect this applies way more than people think and APA-based injunctions will only increase.
At what point has that stopped literally anything this government has done?
US air travelers without REAL IDs will be charged a $45 fee
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46115731
TSA's New $45 Fee at U.S. Airports Unfairly Punishes Families in the Fine Print
There are two avenues for recourse: lobbying your congressman or suing the TSA . I’m guessing the ACLU / EFF and other groups haven’t yet sued because the TSA’s legal authority is broad.
As far as I can tell, the TSA is one thing, while airline policy is another.
The law says it’s not required for security, but airlines might be justified in carrying out their own policies? Honestly curious.
No.
Most airlines only start asking for ID if you want to check a bag. But not for check-in.
Driving is such an activity. Transiting national borders as well. Maybe opening a bank account, but really it should be up to the bank if they want to see my ID.
If I'm travelling but not operating the vehicle, why should I need to carry and present ID? I'm pragmatic, and it's convenient to carry and present my papers to the nice officers, but I shouldn't need to.
Demanding ID when unnecessary is a hallmark of a police state.
KYC rules make it require much more than showing an id.
Edit: I should note that I have one. But lots of people don't, because most people never replace their driver's license card.
Why does anyone in this picture need to associate my ticket with my identity?
