Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Background for the uninitiated: the USA is not quite a real country. It's 50 states that agreed to cooperate in various ways, and share a common army/navy.

While the US government issues documents that work for identification everywhere (called passports) approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.

So when planes began to be attacked by bad guys some decades ago, the aviation industry (regulated at the federal level, because it doesn't take long to fly out of the state you start in) decided to use the identification document that everyone does have: the drivers license.

But those are issued by the states, not the federal government.

And the states don't all do a great job of the surveillance state stuff, so it's pretty easy for a budding Mr Terrorist to get a drivers license, and for his state to not bother keeping much in the way of records to find him if he ever hijacks a plane.

The solution to this falls under the category of the US "trying everything before they get it right" -- the federal government (via congress) decided that only drivers licenses issued by states that get the surveillance stuff right to their satisfaction would be usable to get on a plane (passport always worked and still works, fwiw).

Some states said "ok, that's fine". Some states said "nope, not doing it". <insert years of wrangling> The final solution was that the "not doin it" states were told they could issue two kinds of drivers license (real-id and...un-real-id).

Since you have to explicitly request a real-id license in those states, which costs more, and because people are lazy and ill-informed, there are still people with no valid id document to get on a plane.

So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let them on the plane. Oh...wait, no, the solution is to charge them $45.

> So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let [people who have in their possession a government-issued ID] on the plane.

Some of us still remember how internal checkpoints and the demands for government-issued traveling papers were used in some countries to restrict the travel of and collect persons of interest. The fact that we didn't go "Papers, please!" to folks traveling within the country was once a point of pride. You're suggesting that everyone who wishes to cross the country in less than a week must be in possession of Federal identification papers. [0] You do understand that it's totally legal to have zero identifying documentation other than your boarding pass, right?

Exactly one thing prevented (and prevents) another 9/11: reinforced cockpit doors that lock from inside the cockpit. Everything else that has been done is extremely expensive theater that wastes our time and energy, and empowers authoritarians.

[0] Ubiquitous computerized systems and internetworking means that traveling papers no longer need to be handed out to the traveler. If someone's either of interest or banned there's no need to notify them, you can just snatch them up at (or turn them away from) the checkpoint.

And, like, I want to mention here that the hijackers who successfully wrecked three airliners and murdered everyone on board (including themselves) passed all security screening. We knew who they were! If we had had internal passports in 2001, that would have changed nothing at all.

AIUI, these folks were armed with box cutters and a willingness to kill themselves, everyone on the plane, and everyone in the building they intended to crash into. Folks regularly get knives through TSA screening. There have been numerous official reports about the fact that TSA failed to find > 90% of the weapons and explosives federal red-team employees put into their luggage.

The only thing that has stopped another 9/11 is reinforced cockpit doors that lock from inside the cockpit. Had the cockpit doors been solid and locked, those hijackers would have gotten the shit beaten out of them by passengers and those planes would have made safe emergency landings.

Two things are stopping another 9/11: cockpit doors and passengers knowing they have nothing to lose.

Before 9/11, hijackings were pretty survivable events, but your best bet for survival was to cooperate and wait it out.

The 9/11 hijackers cashed in that history all at once. Now people know their best chance of survival is to fight back as hard as they can.

> approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.

This isn't true. Over half of US citizens have passports https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...

Because Canada and Mexico and the Caribbean Islands require them.

It was closer to being true (though I’d still not have characterized it as “approximate nobody”) when you didn’t need passports for travel to Canada, Mexico, and IIRC many Caribbean cruises. That change increased rates of passport-having a ton.

If you are driving to Canada or Mexico rather than flying, you don't need a passport. An enhanced driver's license will work.

Currently only Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont, and Washington offer enhanced driver's licenses, which also function as Real ID driver's licenses.

I am not sure if I get the surveillance state angle here. The airline already have a passenger register, so unless you lie on the registration then the plane will have log of the travel. The airline do not offer a way to fly anonymously.

Two decades ago in my country there was also two form of ID/passports existing at the same time. The old one and the new one which had bio-metric data and a computer chip. The new did create a new privacy issue in that you had to give away bio-metric data which the old one did not have. Is that what we are talking about for real vs unreal id?

That is close. They hold a bit less info because it is for internal US use only. Its also about the required documentation to have one issued. Also, the reason many countries went biometric at the same time 2 decades ago is because the US absolutely insisted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act

Sounds great to me actually. I’m glad the states still have the leverage to do this.

> approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.

Hilariously untrue.

Almost absolutely everything you said is not true.

I almost get the sense you aren't a US citizen.

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