The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal
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"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.
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
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).
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.
Because we closed the door. Like was policy already.
9/11 could not have happened had the doors been closed.
The door being closed is how the Flight 93 terrorists prevented passengers from re-taking the flight.
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.
Having a reliable ID system is only useful if you have a security apparatus to check them, which literally did not exist then.
The justification for all of the security theatre after 9/11 was that it would stop terrorist attacks. Makes no difference what passport they have as long as you can determine they're not smuggling a bomb up their ass.
Not to mention that you can't take down a plane with a box-cutter anymore. The only way the 9/11 hijackers were successful is that the remaining passengers thought that the hijackers were pirates. It's a burned 0-day.
You could just enact a policy of shooting down all planes within a certain radius of large buildings. I wouldn't be surprised if the annual cost would be orders of magnitude less than the annual cost of TSA. As long as you could ensure that aircraft couldn't be weaponized against major infrastructure, hijacking a plane would be no more dangerous than hijacking a train.
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.
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.
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/
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...
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.
> 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.
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.
The point is that lots of people will pay this fee and it will equal a large amount of money and it does nothing of value. It’s just a fee for the fee’s sake. It serves no practical purpose, it’s just punitive.
What is the actual legitimate purpose of this fee that millions will likely pay? Almost half the country flies annually and multiple states don’t require a RealID in the first place. So we’re talking millions of people, some of which will pay it multiple times, per year until full compliance. This is built to net a consequential amount of money and it doesn’t seem like it’s for any purpose other than to generate revenue at people’s expense.
It does not make flying safer. It doesn’t even pretend to make flying safer. It doesn’t cover some cost. You can fly without it.
It’s an arbitrary tax that will mostly be paid by people who can’t or won’t take the time to go to the DMV to get an ID that is not even required to replace the perfectly good one they already have. At the end of the day this is why nobody has gotten it! They keep saying you need to get it (years now) but you don’t actually need to. If it’s that important then they should say “you cannot get on an airplane without one.” But it isn’t, so they don’t, and now that’s just a revenue opportunity.
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.
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.
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ71/html/PLAW...
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?
You are already free to go that other way (towards the street), but not necessarily free to go the way you want.
The ruse here is to pretend like the property owner is agreeing with TSA because TSA forced them to this agreement by government act. But that is just the government trying to have their cake and eat it by forcing someone to do something and then pretending it is a private act which isn't bound to the constitutional right to not have to answer additional questions.
The government can absolutely pass laws prohibiting you from entering a privately owned location. There is no constitutional right of access to private property.
And more specifically, the commerce clause of the constitution allows the government to regulate air travel, which means regulating airports. The fact that they're privately owned doesn't change anything. If a private airport owner allowed you to proceed through security, they'd be breaking the law.
There's no public access doctrine for airports the way there is for streets or parks.
You clear seem to wish it was otherwise. But it's easy to do the research to understand where the authority comes from and why it's entirely constitutional.
If the difference between access and not having access is relinquishing your civil rights, then the reason for denial is exercising your civil rights. Those are explicitly protected. So while you're right they could make a law that says 'no one on the plane' they cannot make a law that says "everyone on the plane except those who won't give up their 4th or 5th amendment rights not to answer additional questions."
There have been prior SCOTUS cases narrowly allowing asking name, DOB, addresses, as well as inspection of your items during certain inspections, but this is something entirely different beyond that asking further probing questions about your identity.
And that brings us back to the tagline of the article:
The law, as written, is clear: You have the right to fly without ID, without paying a $45 fee, and without answering questions
...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...
This is just a way to compel compliance and to push the agenda for ID with higher documentary requirements, ultimately to deny the vote.
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
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.
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.
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?
It makes sense because, if you look closely, you will see that your passport does not indicate your address.
Yes, but you’d have to be able to retrieve mail from that address?
> - 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.
But it’s totemic when you dig into conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants voting. RealID comes up a lot.
Except that it appears one of the primary reasons this has become a thing is that the Feds are angry at states like Washington that don't verify citizenship when issuing driver's licenses. The whole point was that Washington (as an example) wanted to make sure people were able to get an identification and driving with a license (IE: some degree of documentation, had achieved some degree of driver's education and testing somewhere along the line...) regardless of their immigration status - and that pissed off the Feds. So it shouldn't be related to citizenship but that's part of how we got here.
Could the $45 be a way to pay for some extra manual screening? Maybe? Or do they not deserve any benefit of the doubt.
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?
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.
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.
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.
You are, right?
Unless you want to!
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).
But mmWave really just is not dangerous. Current generation 5G cellular and WiFi standards are mmWave and they are just as harmless.
Molecular damage just starts showing up with THF/terahertz emissions band but mmWave is in the EHF and is has more than 10x the wavelength of THF (i.e. it is far wider/more gentle than THF). In a very real sense mmWave can't even interact with most of the molecules in your body.
mmWave can interact with the water in your body but at the levels it's being used it's only really useful for seeing the water. You'd needs orders of magnitude more powerful emissions than what these scanners use to actually cause damage at that frequency.
i.e. It's the difference between using the flashlight on your phone to see in the dark and using the concentrated light from solar-thermal heliostats to boil water or heat molten salt. No matter how hard you try, your flashlight is never gonna boil water.
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).
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?!
But walking around with cameras maintaining the unequivocal right to record what happens in the commons seems like a very important and thankless task.
It strikes me that the first clause of this sentence and the last one are unambiguously contradictory.
Right now I don't think there are that many First Amendment auditors around, so there's not much point in passing new laws to deal with them. But if they became more common, it might be necessary to draw the line, as we did in the 90s with stalking.
I didn't suggest it was speech; it's press, no?
Again, I don't have enough context to cast judgment about them being assholes or violating some other law (like harassment, etc) - I don't support that _at all_.
However, the basic right to document one's surroundings in public is absolutely essential to liberty, especially now.
You say "harassment", but that's precisely the problem. Many things that any reasonable person would identify as harassment are protected speech under the First Amendment. So these auditors go around harassing people, knowing that they're causing people emotional distress, because they're bullies who want to make people feel bad.
You should look around carefully and see who is actively defending government fraud right now.
If you're honest, you may be shocked.
A major win for the people.
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.
Law in a democracy ALWAYS lags public sentiment because without sentiment to pander to no politician will lift a finger. Overt sentiment always lags behind closed doors sentiment because practically nobody is gonna display overt sentiment until there's some indication from their experience that support for their sentiment is there. There MUST be room for petty noncompliance to let people discover that the noncompliance in some unknown case is perhaps not bad in order to kick start the process.
People like you are actively working to prevent and delay alignment between the people and the government/laws. If everyone subscribed to your ideology nothing would ever get done. If more people subscribed to it then things would change slower than they do.
You can tell yourself whatever you need to sleep at night but this sort of compliance as a virtue ideology you subscribe to is the evil that keeps our democracies from delivering good results promptly. I'm not saying go murder your neighbor because "fuck the law" or whatever, but an ideology that does not permit for deviance when such deviance is tasteful is a bad one.
Not always, just the last few decades.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1431/
Sure (although I don't think there's ever been a law against being gay, only against particular acts).
> There MUST be room for petty noncompliance to let people discover that the noncompliance in some unknown case is perhaps not bad in order to kick start the process.
Petty noncompliance isn't the only source of information, and even if it was, that doesn't negate the cost to society.
> People like you are actively working to prevent and delay alignment between the people and the government/laws. If everyone subscribed to your ideology nothing would ever get done. If more people subscribed to it then things would change slower than they do.
So the wild swings of public opinion will be tempered somewhat, and society's path will be smoothed. Yes, that's the point. Same spirit as having a constitution and a second chamber rather than making everything run on a simple majority.
> I'm not saying go murder your neighbor because "fuck the law" or whatever
But you are. That's where your ideology leads once people start following it in practice.
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.
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.
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).
In any case, it's legal to opt-out of the scanners, so why would they care what method you use (really what language you use) to indicate you'd rather get a pat-down than go through the scanners? Either way you're complying with the law.
> 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.
Either they're joking (and should've added an emoji) or more likely, parent is being childish and phrasing points to finding a "clever hack" (i.e., not injured). There's nothing clever about unethical and criminal pro tips.
Any chance one gets to regain freedom, by any method, take it.
In this situation proving someone is lying would be news worthy. You will win in this situation if you stand your ground.
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.
> 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 haven't so much as gotten a speeding ticket in nearly a decade but law enforcement and border guards break out the microscope every time they see me.
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.
It's not a great analogy, but the same applies to registered concealed carry gun owners. They're not the people who shoot people.
Still screened and detained 100 percent of the time, sometimes for hours, sometimes having to surrender personal devices, decades later.
The message is very clear.
What were you hoping to achieve by sending that report?
Most people would have just thought "wow, lucky I wasn't caught with that", taken it out of the bag so it didn't happen again and carried on with their lives.
Deviating from that normal response makes it look like you're just trying to cause trouble.
As I wrote in a very different thread, I avoid putting anything in baggage that I might carryon that is even marginally prohibited. I used to do a lot more travel and it's inevitable that knives and the like would inevitable get left in a pocket.
Officer: Look at this knife. You're trying to take this on the plane?
Me: Holy shit I didn't realize that was in my bag.
Officer: Well do you want it back? Or do you want to fly today?
Me: I don't want it.
Officer: Don't mind if I keep it?
Me: It's all yours.
It was a $13 knife, but he liked it.
No doubt that was a security violation, but it's all security theatre.
Now, knives could only be used to commit a crime i.e. assaulting another passenger or crew. Banning liquids does more to prevent terrorists than banning knives. I can see banning them for the same reason concerts ban them, that it is a lot of people in a small space, but that is very different than “national security” or “preventing terrorism”.
> Isn’t that what the scanners are for?
Err, not that I know of, I generally use the OED to look up the various recorded uses of words.
> To find large metallic objects?
The OED is for finding words, "scanners" that I've used or made are for mapping background geological structures via seismic waves, gravitational waves, magnetic waves, gamma waves. Medical scanners I've worked with have generally not bee used for finding large metallic objects and some should not be used if a patient has large metal objects attached or within.
> Why do you need additional “random” screenings behind that?
In 40+ years of scanning things there's not been a single time I've needed an additioan "random" scan - a few times scans have been repeated due to various failures to save data.
> Or are you saying the scanners don’t work to find even obvious weapons?
In the comment you responded to I said that it is not unreasonable to think that a Sikh you meet, anywhere, might be carrying a knife, a comb, a bracelet, etc. I did not mention anything about scanners. No, seriously, go and recheck the comment.
> If so, we should get rid of the scanners.
We? All scanners? Okay, well, thanks for sharing that opinion.
I figure various groups of scanner users will want to keep using them, of course. I personally am in favour of scanners for exploration and medical work.
I mean TSA, but it also applies to other groups too.
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 fixed it by filling out a form requesting a review, after which I received a “redress number” which could be entered into my booking information. It reliably stopped after that.
I'm the whitest white person you'll find, white bread and turkey sandwich. I get screened all the time. Most of the time the agents are not white, WTF would I blame the color of their skin?
More at 11.
When it comes to customs & border, it's more about being "ethnically terrorist", which is more so Middle Eastern than Black in US at this particular moment in time.
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 did meet a lot of older TSA agents who told me they tried to stand as far away from the scanners as possible all day, and they completely understood my position on not going through em. I'm from LA, and I remember when this happened [0] so my general view on letting anyone shoot any kind of imaging radiation through me is pretty dim, but more so if they can't count to ten or tie their own shoelaces.
[0] https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2009-oct-13-me-cedar...
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.
If enough people actually cared about the failed audits, we’d invest in making sure they didn’t fail.
As it is, it’s settled in this funky middle ground that seems to maximize cost/incompetence/hassle which is generally the picture of America overall.
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.
Slight tangent but I recall travelling within the Schengen Zone for the first time and just walking off the plane and straight into a taxi. When I explained what I did to someone she asked "but what about security? How do they know you've not got a bomb?" I don't think I had the words to explain that, if I did manage to sneak a bomb onto the plane into Madrid, I was probably not going to save it for the airport after I landed...
Hopefully they haven't changed. It's nice to see a place still left without the paranoia.
I mean, yes, quite an apt description of our reality. This has basically been the modus operandi of the whole of American society for the last 3 decades.
Can't have your kids riding bikes in the neighborhood. Can't build something on your own property yourself without 3 rounds of permitting and environmental review. Can't have roads that are too narrow for a 1100 horsepower ladder truck. Can't get onto a plane without going through a jobs program. Can't cut hair without a certificate. Can't teach 6 year olds without 3 years of post grad schooling + debt. Can't have plants in a waiting room because they might catch on fire. Can't have a comfortable bench because someone who looks like shit might sleep on it.
Can't can't can't can't ...
I lived in Switzerland for a time and there are many notorious rules (e.g. don't shower or flush your toilet after 10pm; don't recycle glass out of working hours) governing day-to-day behaviour which initially seem ridiculous and intrusive. However, what you quickly realise is that many of these are rooted in a simple cultural approach of "live your life as you wish, just don't make other people's life worse" - an approach I came to appreciate.
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.
Meanwhile, I haven’t even had a western airports metal detector even fire on the same belt in years.
And airport security in Israel makes Indian airport security feel like a breeze and I found Turkish airport security to be similar to India's (I remember landing in IST a couple years ago post-COVID and how the news monitors all blared about the 3-6 Turkish soldiers who died in Turkish controlled Syria the day previously).
All three are in very tenuous neighborhoods where the risks of mass casualty terror attacks remains a very real possibility and no on-duty officer wants to be the one who's name comes up in an inquiry into a terror attack should they happen.
Also, from what I remember you are either a Chinese national or someone who has travelled significantly to China. It's the equivalent of a Russian national or Russian-origin person traveling to Poland or Estonia post-2022. Anyone with that profile falls under stricter scrutiny in India due to reciprocal treatment of Indian-nationals and Indian-origin people from Arunachal [6][7] and Ladakh [8] as well as the multiple recent India-China standoffs.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Delhi_car_explosion
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Nowgam_explosion
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Bengaluru_cafe_bombing
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_Reasi_attack
[4] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_Pahalgam_attack
[5] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_India%E2%80%93Pakistan_co...
[6] - https://indianexpress.com/article/world/who-is-prema-thongdo...
[7] - https://idsa.in/publisher/comments/china-ups-the-ante-in-aru...
[8] - https://www.indiatoday.in/news-analysis/story/why-china-is-e...
The needless repetition and duplication of tasks achieves little actual "security" and is more a jobs program for a population that is desperately underskilled, underemployed and borderline unemployable. Never mind the fact that airports like Bombay are literally meters away from slums, which are a far greater security risk than actual passengers.
Your list of citations is entirely meaningless because Indian airports are no more or less secure than the average airport in the west. What India manages to do extremely well is annoy the daylights out of travellers for mindless bureaucratic reasons.
Please can you explain how security stamping the back of your boarding pass meaningfully adds to "security" and how fifteen checks of your passport could have avoided a single one of the incidents you list?
Not just in Israel, but even at other airports for flights to Israel! I was surprised to find that flights to Israel from JFK and EWR actually have a secondary security screening at the gate. In fact, the entire waiting area is walled off with only 1 or 2 controlled entries and exits. If you have to leave the area to go to the bathroom, well, you're just going to get screened again when you come back.
And they are very thorough. They WILL rummage through your carry on and purse and shoes.
(I wasn't even traveling to Israel, I was at an adjacent gate but got in the wrong line by mistake, haha!)
Brit here.
That's simply the British way of "calling you out" on your bullshit. Had you given a legitimate reason not to be scanned (and I can't think of one offhand), then I assure you, they would have been quite nice and helpful; certainly so in comparison to American standards of airport security staff!
The point where you present your ticket+ID is before and separate from the physical screening. It could be anywhere from a few meters to dozens of meters separating them.
At the screening stage, the agents do not know who you are or your nationality.
> when you are asked to be patted down, having the courage to lie "I can't raise my arms over my head"
You only get a pat down if you trigger additional screening or opt out. Not being able to raise my arms is NOT opting out. Therefore, no pat down.
Saucers for eyes, saucers! Hah
The reality is that screening raises the bar enough that most casuals won’t risk it unless they’re crazy, which is worth something, and makes most people feel comfy, which is also worth something.
It’s like using a master lock on your shed, or a cheap kwikset on your front door.
Repeated examples on HN
- TSA effectiveness
- AI Writing code free bug
- Self driving cars get into accidents
Maybe you are willing to pay 15% for AI that saves you 20%. Even if it isn't very effective, you come out slightly ahead. Or maybe you pay 85% for something you deem to be 90% effective
With TSA you pay 300% for something you might judge to be 2% effective and you don't have a choice.
- Self driving cars have measurably fewer accidents.
If you're confusing the two, I suggest you look into the data.
*Not sure on AI code yet.
Or... you could slip the TSA person a $50 and say "keep the change". Legally.
There is no risk in submitting false documents. They reject valid documents all the time. They don't report you to authorities when they reject your documents.
So neither avenue is like even a cheap lock. They are more like door knobs that keep the door closed until you twist the knob that is designed to be easy to twist.
Except the risk you'll miss your flight, which in most cases is the screw that is turned.
My wife and I both have RealID driver's licenses. She had to get a replacement, and apparently the machines used to print them for mailing out later (as opposed to going down to their office and getting a replacement in person) are just ever so slightly off - so her license won't scan. She was given a surprising amount of harassment on a flight not long ago over this matter. She got me to take a photograph of her passport and send it to her so she could show it on the return trip - where her license again failed to scan. This is a fairly well-documented problem. Reports from all over the country have it, and it always seems to be certain license printers that just fail.
So now she carries her Global Entry card, which is otherwise only used for access to the expedited line for land and sea border crossings but is a valid RealID in itself, for domestic flights. It scans correctly.
You get one set of people's rights compromised to salve the feelings of another set, and this is not right.
The worst thing is that indulging it doesn't lessen the fear either. It just means people reach for something else to be "afraid" of.
My dad, with similar features, had the additional (mis)fortune of several work trips to the Middle East and China on his passport. He was "randomly" selected pretty much every time on his US trips, until about ~10 years ago.
Hmmm, now I wonder. Like most other people I had suspected that the "random" screenings of people fitting a certain profile were just biases of the agents creeping in. But could it be, given that the whole process is rather public in view of the rest of the people in line, this is also part of that security theater... i.e. maybe the agents are sometimes pandering to the biases of the travellers?
Normalize having two lines; one with tsa, one without. See which airplane people actually board after a while. Let us put our time and money on the line and we’ll see what we really think. It’s the only way to tell.
I’m sure in a world with tsa for buses and trains some people would say the same things they do now about our tsa.
But I personally do not care that much, because I think most terrorists are dumb or crazy, and you can't fix all dumb or crazy. Some of the dumb and crazy become terrorists, some become CEO-s, some do maintenance of something critical. If something really bad happens I would not feel much better if it was a "dumb CEO" that caused it or it was a "dumb terrorist".
What about the real psychological need of not wanting to be surveilled that also quite a lot of people have?
In particular concerning Facebook:
The very radical stances that people have concerning Facebooks (i.e. both the success of Facebook, and the existence of people who are radically opposed to social media sites) rather shows that both stances are very present in society and the trenches between these stances run deep.
If it was "Glass Iraq or make people take off their shoes", then I'll take the shoes...
But honestly? Fuck these people. We have extended them unlimited credit to make social change, and they always want more and worse changes. Their insecurities are inexhaustible. We need to declare them bankrupt of political capital. We need to bully them and make it clear their views aren't welcome, frankly.
We are 25 years deep into "Letting the terrorists win", and I'm fucking sick of it.
If you let it be known that the FDA inspection amounts to a high school dropout trying to read a manifest on a shipping container full of imported cinnamon, a lot more people will opt for the cheaper cinnamon. But a significant percentage will still pay the premium.
There is very little about that inspection that protects people, and just because something is not inspected doesn't mean it has lead in it. If you really want to be safe, you should run your cinnamon through your own detection lab.
What we need is an iPhone app that can detect guns, explosives, anthrax, covid, Canadians, and any other airplane hazard. Then let people carry that personal TSA sniffer onto the plane. They can feel safe and secure and the rest of us can save a fortune in taxes.
If you fly intrastate in Alaska there is no screening on commercial flights (it seems TSA must not be required on non-interstate flights). Technically it's still illegal to bring a gun but no one would know one way or the other. It really didn't bother me that there was no security, in fact, it felt great, and at least I could be sure if a bear met us on the tarmac someone would probably be ready.
I know of one other story I heard secondhand from someone experiencing it, of a small regional airline in the South, where if you checked a gun, the pilot just gives it back to the passenger...
If the passenger is white. They would call the cops on anyone else. The state dept of terrorism would get involved if they were 1/1000 middle eastern.
No doubt! Then strap it to our arms and call it a Pip Boy.
Nonsense. Most of that is just because it’s been normalised - because it exists and the people manning it make such a song and dance about it. Going from that to nothing would freak some people out, but if it were just gradually pared back bit by bit people wouldn’t need it anymore.
Here in Australia there’s no security for a lot of regional routes (think like turboprop (dash-8) kind of routes) starting from small airports, because it’s very expensive to have the equipment and personnel at all these small airports, and on a risk-benefit analysis the risk isn’t high enough. Some people are surprised boarding with no security, but then they’re like, “Oh, well must be OK then I guess or they wouldn’t let us do it”…
We also don’t have any liquid limits at all for domestic flights, and don’t have e to take our shoes off to go through security domestically or internationally, and funnily enough we aren’t all nervous wrecks travelling.
It's been proven from time to time that the strength of a security system is mostly determined by its strongest element, and defense in depth, and making people jump through hoops contributes comparatively little.
That's why you can go reasonably anywhere on the web, and have your computer publically reachable from any point in the world, yet be reasonably safe, provided you don't do anything particularly dumb, like installing something from an unsafe source.
That's why these weird security mitigation strategies like password rotation every two weeks with super complex passwords, and scary click-through screens about how youll go straight to jail if you misuse the company computer are laughable.
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.
Just because you can get around TSA checkpoints doesn't mean it's not "about" security. There's only so much that can be done when we have to balance safety and convenience.
2) those scanning machines have leaked their images before to the public so its okay not to want to go through them and have your.png on there forever.
Are we saying that if they stopped doing that there would not be an increase in incidents?
Or is it that they are overly performative? I’ve never been all that annoyed with raising my hands above my head, but it seems like, in your case, if a passenger can’t do that, they would make an exception for you anyways. Which seems fair?
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.
Only half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the right wing people who are hand wringing about ""The Mark of the Beast"" while saying that immigrants need to identify themselves. The other half of the opposition to federal IDs comes from the left who insist that federal IDs are a conspiracy to stop poor people from voting. This is a bipartisan issue, but you only acknowledged one half.
DHS says they don't consider RealID to be reliable "proof" of immigration status[0][1], so you might consider rethinking that strategy.
[0] https://www.biometricupdate.com/202601/dhs-agent-tells-court...
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.alsd.76...
I did, I became American and now have a US passport. That is just moving of the goal post by current admin.
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.
For context, at one point I couldn't even get AB60 license in California because I didn't have a single photo ID that isn't expired, and you just need some photo id and pulse to get AB60.
> Will the DMV accept a purchase order from Amazon?
DMV accepted my marriage license and bank statement. Bank accepted "I will mail you my card, bring back in sealed envelope".
> Rather you lack perspective on the wider world.
I don't think so.
So assuming you already have a regular driver's license and a bank account this would make the requirement to fly 1. verify address with bank 2. figure out an additional piece of documentation 3. pay fee for "real" ID 4. wait a while.
How does that improve security? Why do I need any ID at all in the first place? If the concern is weapons or explosives then just search for those ... which they already do.
Another thought occurs to me. What if I grab a homeless person off the street and attempt to fly with him? So now there's an additional $45 "no ID" fee? That hardly seems reasonable. Will they even be able to verify much of anything in that scenario to begin with? (Granted that's an edge case but that doesn't mean it's okay to ignore it.)
Nope, KYC rules are different from Real ID rules. Banks accept more documents ad PoA. It comes down to: does the person have access to banking or not because it's the easiest PoA.
> How does that improve security? Why do I need any ID at all in the first place? If the concern is weapons or explosives then just search for those ... which they already do.
Like I said in the original message - every state has different requirements for IDs. I was able to get California AB-60 with just paper (no RFID) foreign passport that looked like I made it myself and laminated at it at FedEx.
> 3. pay fee for "real" ID 4. wait a while.
I don't know how other states do it, but I'm pretty sure in CA it's the same time it takes to get a regular ID. and the fee difference is like $20?
> Another thought occurs to me. What if I grab a homeless person off the street and attempt to fly with him? So now there's an additional $45 "no ID" fee?
Well, that person still needs some ID to fly? I'm against that tho, I'd start enforcing real id years ago if it were up to me.
In order for me, myself, to get a Real ID in Ohio, I need to produce documents demonstrating all 5 of the following elements[1]: Full legal name, DOB, legal presence in the US, SSN, and Ohio street address -- with the Ohio street address element requiring two separate documents.
Most of this is easy. I can rummage around in the paperwork pile and find most of what I need.
But the only acceptable document that applies to me (a single white male born in the US who has never had a reason to get a passport) is an original or certified copy of my birth certificate. That's kind of a pain in the ass: I have a copy, and that copy is on the fancy green cardstock the health department uses where I was born, and that copy was good enough to enlist and get paid in the US military, but it's not a certified copy and therefore is not good enough to prove my full name. My original DD214 is also not good enough.
So I'll have to round that up (which will cost me money). And then I'll have to go to the BMV (which costs money and time), and wait in line (which costs more time), and then pay for these documents to be reviewed. Eventually, they'll mail me a new ID.
Achievable? Sure. I'll get it done.
But it's quite clearly more arduous than having "two pieces of paper that have: 1) their name 2) their address", which is rather oversimplified.
---
And meanwhile: Air travel doesn't have to be expensive. In my direct experience, a person can fly from Ohio to Florida and back in cattle class for as little as $37 if they're not picky about dates.
Until last month, that is. This month: It costs an extra $45, or a Real ID.
[1]: https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/publicsafety.ohio.g...
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.
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.
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.
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.
Although, I thought it would just be delayed indefinitely. I suppose it effectively has been.
Too much of our economy depends on them.
It's not pay $45 to go though, it's pay $45 for someone to take you around back and look you up based on secondary identification, and if they can't positively identify you based on that you still can't go through.
This is a system that has been in place for a long, long time. You could always say you don't have ID and they'll look you up. The change is they're now charging for 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.
This is also not accurate. If you're talking about Clear, you just skip to the front of the normal line. If you're talking about Pre, those people are individually background-checked before hand, and it costs $19/yr, so it's not exactly a tophat and monocle only program. Especially since that's half the price of a one-way taxi ride to the airport, let alone the ticket. The airport self-selects for the fairly well off to begin with.
The lowest amount I see on https://www.tsa.gov/precheck is $58.75.
And before people start to argue that planes aren't public transportation - over 10 million _passenger_ flights a year. It is critical to the functioning of all aspects of society.
And these additions are the opposite of privatization, they are federal requirements, de facto socialization.
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.
Actually it does matter. Chevron deference is gone. If Congress didn't specifically approve this method, it's not legal
Chevron doesn’t change anything here. Checking IDs easily falls within the scope of the word “screening,” no matter who is deciding the meaning of that term.
> 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.
You clipped the first part while the definition was a lot longer including the above TSA can do anything they want escape hatch. Have a good day sir.
> You clipped the first part while the definition was a lot longer including the above TSA can do anything they want escape hatch. Have a good day sir.
Your interpretation that TSA can "do anything they want to" just because the administrator can approve additional methods is grossly incorrect.
Have a good one.
I assure you TSA thinks it can do whatever it wants. I say this as a white male and have certainly heard even worse stories that my own of egregious violations from people with other demographics.
"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...
Ugh.
I think ICE has clearly demonstrated that this is not true
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!
If an agency has shitty officers doing dodgy stuff, it's on the agency. The agents may be declared immune to direct litigation, but any claims and reparations should be automatically shifted to the agency.
The fact that cops can break laws, actually harm people and then make prosecution basically impossible is bonkers.
And I’m saying that as someone extremely pro-curtailment of police/TSA/CBP scope and resources, and extremely critical and aware of the law enforcement abuse and overreach epidemic. This one just doesn’t have an easy solve—not without a massive overhaul of the entire US justice system down to the roots.
This is indeed bonkers, because history is rife with examples of this ending badly. And that bonkers goes far deeper than just this issue.
If that is what the voters want, then the victim minority can only reconsider their role in the social contract.
So, Frommers should fund a test case.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
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.
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"
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...
In effect that tracks who is going where.
No, it is to make it safe for any reason, which goes beyond whether or not they brought box cutters.
To bring it back to the root question: how does REAL ID mitigate these threats?
All 50 states and 5 US territories issue RealID compliant drivers license/ID
Every contractor has to do that. That’s the price you pay for going into that business (reason #999 thet while I work in cloud consulting I work full time for consulting companies).
Even as a business traveler, I have to pay my own expenses and wait for reimbursement.
I fly in and out of ATL - the busiest airport in the US and one of the busiest in the world - I walk up to the TSA line, look at the camera , scan my ticket.
Then I take my wallet and my phone out of my pocket and put in my book bag, let it go through the scanner I walk through the scanner and grab my bookbag
This is the same process we did flying back from Costa Rica and London last year with the addition of showing our passport.
Everyone acts like this process is so much different than any other country.
Except for not having my book bag on me, it’s the same process to get on the “Chunnel” from London to Paris
Not recognizing or incorrectly interpreting "Crash I-9 N/B Exp Right 2 Lanes Closed Merge Left 2000 ft" is also dangerous, right?
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.
I have access but deliberately choose not to provide it. Growing up I was told something about voting with my feet. Not so sure it works very well in practice though.
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.
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.
But, that is not the topic of conversation above -- we were talking about trips 600+ miles in distance. These are almost exclusively not commutes.
Averages don't necessarily describe your whole data set. Just like how the average person has around 1 testicle, this data is also multimodal :) ... People commute alone, but they go on vacation with friends/family.
My figure was based on miles travelled, not trips. Further, your assumption that local travel would severely skew the data seems at best unsupported. Think about all those trips taking the kids to school/soccer practice/etc. Having a lot of people in the car is going to radically skew the average number of occupants up.
> Just like how the average person has around 1 testicle, this data is also multimodal
Then why are you essentially arguing that people with two testicles are a niche case?
The overwhelming majority of car trips that happen are going to be car trips that make sense to be car trips. That's not evidence of driving's economic sensibility, it is selection bias. The question is of all trips where a person needs to go a certain distance, how often is flying the cheaper option, and for long trips it is a lot.
The transportation to/from the airport at either end can often be significant, as many parts of the US are not accessible via public transit. And rural destinations often have no final-destination options other than an expensive rental car. It is common to incur these costs.
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.
Because if you are going 600+ mi alone with minimal luggage you fly, because it's cheaper.
1. You're normalizing one cost by the occupancy but assuming the other is single occupancy.
2. The assumption that folks are alone in a car is only true only for short trips, trips that are unpractical and expensive by plane. Folks don't fly 600+ mi because it's cheaper (the fuel isn't cheaper until about 1600 mi), but because it's faster.
> Folks don't fly 600+ mi because it's cheaper (the fuel isn't cheaper until about 1600 mi)
There are costs besides fuel. Tolls, wear and tear on the vehicle, food and lodging expenses from the longer duration trip, etc. A 1000 mile drive will cost roughly double a 1000 mile plane ticket.
> The assumption that folks are alone in a car is only true only for short trips
Citation needed
And when people travel 600+ miles on their own dime, the most common reason is leisure/vacation, which people typically do with friends or family.
It isn't more expensive typically, but yes when the value of a person's time is considered it's not even close.
> And when people travel 600+ miles on their own dime, the most common reason is leisure/vacation
Perhaps it is the most common single reason, but that doesn't mean it's even a majority, nonetheless an overwhelming one for that subset.
> which people typically do with friends or family.
Which does not actually require the friends or family to drive with you if you are meeting them at a destination, such as if you live far from a person you are going to visit.
So some fraction of all trips are leisure, some fraction of leisure is with other people, some fraction of leisure with other people involves travelling. Again, no one is arguing that driving never makes sense, only that the cases where flying makes sense aren't a small niche.
If all seats were business class, than economics of scale would kick in and average ticket prices would be more like 2X per seat rather than the 5-10X that you pay for business class vs economy.
Flying is a war-crime in the sky for anyone not in business class.
It doesn't even save time, in fact it takes more time screwing around with the camera
What problem is any of this solving?
Amex even knows whether you used your card on Delta for instance to buy a ticket or pay ancillary fees/drinkd on board. They use the information to see whether you are eligible for a credit (Amex Platinum)
- 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.
That this does solve some hidden problem? ("if it really doesn't matter, then why do they need to collect it?")
That folks should be conditioned to freely provide any data, scan, or biometrics upon request?
When the government says "jump", always ask "how high"?
I don't think anyone ever shared a naked picture taken with a microphone (semi-related: https://www.yahoo.com/news/tsa-backlash-grows-over-leaked-bo...). I don't think it's terribly rare to join a meeting not realizing that the camera option was still on (https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13240957/Zoom-view-...)
It's also not clear what this has to do with the TSA taking pictures at the airport. At this point I feel like you're just arguing for the sake of argument
Just like covering up a camera from a bad actor on a laptop does little good compared to the information that can be gleaned by a microphone - the same with a phone.
Meanwhile it's not clear what it accomplishes to spend time advocating that the slightest pushback on any of this is pointless
While at the same time arguing that they already know you're there, already have your picture from your id, and don't need updated pictures for better facial recognition?
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.
To be honest the worry about terrorists hijacking planes under Clinton proved to be quite prescient only a few years later.
Then one plane crashed. And some passengers weren't insured, as they were not officially on the plane. Those families could not get a body back, nor any compensation, as the company said that they could not prove they were on the plane.
I don't read the small print of IATA when getting a ticket, maybe I should someday.
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.
I've had my testicles squeezed, fondled, but thankfully, mostly avoided.
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.
Did you know that Norway only introduced a national ID card in 2020? Until then if you didn't have a driver's license the only other state-issued ID option was a passport, and 10% of Norwegians don't have one. Until around 2015 or so banks would issue your bank card with a photo and your birthdate on it, and that was used as a de facto ID.
I've flown between plenty of EEA countries without ever having to show an ID. The requirement to have one in the US is incredibly stupid and only serves to make it harder for decent people to travel. It provides no actual value to safety.
So what the hell part of the EU are you talking about where they don't ask for any ID at the point where you are boarding, whatsoever?
For reference, here is Iberia's page for required ID when flying, and I've seen that this is absolutely enforced every time when checking in and boarding.
Seriously, just stop trying to use us to justify silly arguments about the USA. Yes, Europeans must show ID to travel, must absolutely show ID to vote (it would just be ridiculous if we didn’t) and getting the ID costs us money and must be renewed every 10 years (and paid for).
I fly intra-Schengen flights at least twice a year. I had to show ID sometimes before COVID but I never had to show ID after that, it actually caught my attention as anybody could have travelled in my place. I do online check-in, drop the bags, go through security, and show the boarding pass. Last time was three months ago, and once again: no ID.
From the top of my mind I can say that I travelled from/to Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Spain, Portugal in the last few years and I didn't need to present any ID to board the plane.
Citation needed. I believe you are mistaken.
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.
Thats not a constitutional democracy, thats just anarchy and rule by whoever can buy the most seats.
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.
FWIW, I’m not sure that TSA ID verification does indeed have a PRA claim in the way the article asserts, and I am very sure that the PRA is a dumb law that needs to be removed: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/why-the-paperwork-reduction-a...
The police are not expected to replace the ID. They are expected to give you a proof that you have indeed lost one. In fact Russian embassy won't give you a "returnee permit" unless you go to a Spanish police station and declare your loss of a document.
Even foreign police cannot be expected to just generate documents on a whim.
In the US states don't have embassies, but surely a police station in New York can ask the registration office in California to send them your picture by WhatsApp and have at least a vague kind of proof that you are who you claim to be.
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.
I'm from a 3rd world country and we have a national id, the usa is weird in the strangest things.
Stop with the gaslighting. It's not paranoia when it's happening plain as day with an authoritarian regime arresting journalists, pointing guns at civilians, threatening retaliation by placing on lists for 1a-protected activities, and arresting people for not being white without a judicial warrant.
And yet when the Federal government deploys paramilitaries to a city to do sweeps of everybody who isn't carrying papers, while also using 2nd-amendment lawful carry as a pretext to murder someone, those same people are very quiet.
Bill Gates and a poorly thought out brainfart about vaccine microchips becoming a conspiracy, vs. Musk and an explicit plan with a funded company to make brain-computer interfaces to merge humans an AI met with barely a peep.
Government spying on all of us was an awful dystopian nightmare right up until Snowden showed us they already had been.
Conspiracy theorists claiming contrails changing the climate, but the actual climate change from the invisible CO2 etc. of the same planes being dismissed as if it were the conspiracy.
Or the one about 5G sending mind-control signals, ignoring the real mind-control (such as it is) coming from accessing social media on your phone… via 5G.
I was about to wonder what pizzagate would turn out to be, then I remembered the Andrew formerly known as Prince and specifically the attempt at using Pizza Express as an alibi.
At this point, given what we've witnessed from them regarding injecting bleach and so on, I wouldn't be surprised if someone in the Trump administration will turn out to have done the conspiracy-theory version of adrenochrome even though it has been produced by organic synthesis since at least 1952. And if they are, it will be brushed aside.
I don't know whether it's organically muddled thinking as ideas get repeated and blurred without proper thought or evidence, or whether this in itself is "chaff" to hide things (given the allegations around Epstein and 4chan, maybe there's something to that), or whether it's a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Where I’m from you carry it everywhere like a credit card.
And funnily enough, all legal immigrants in the USA have a national standardized id, it’s called the green card, so that makes it extra funny that citizens don’t have one.
That said I'm generally fine with the current voting laws and don't see any need to increase scrutiny. But all states have at least some level of verification to get added to the voter rolls.
But this does not have to be a federal ID. Could be just any ID.
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.
Amazingly (to me) the TSA process was easy. What wasn't easy was checking into a crappy Travelodge near the airport. I imagine if I were staying at one of my usual chains where I have a loyalty card, a manager would have waved away any problems. (I did have photo ID and I was plastered all over the Web; I just didn't have backup government issued photo ID which I now make a particular point of carrying.)
What can we do to get there? Is anybody organizing?
I want to open my wallet. Where can I donate?
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”.
Outside of ERs in exigent circumstances, any commercial enterprise in the U.S. retains the right to "refuse service" though the nuances of enumerated reasons backed by jurisprudence differ by industry and locale.
An airline can not refuse the "service purchase" unless the customer has been "banned" (technically a trespass statute), but they can refuse to "execute service" for a whole host of reasons including unforeseeable "Acts of God", logistics, or simply if the customer is intoxicated.
You're correct that any sort of federal no-fly list is not lawful and, so far, there isn't enough court precedence to make a general policy and the ACLU has won some (limited) court victories. IMO, it is unconstitutional.
In practice, a "banned" passenger is trespassed off of airline property (the plane or gate) and that prior trespass is noted in their customer registry. If the "banned" passenger attempts to fly with the airline again, they are advised verbally or with text that they will not be able to board the plane, but they can still book a ticket. The passenger is then "trespassed" (again) at the gate and not allowed to board.
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
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.
They had some service that gave them a bunch of identity verification questions about my past and I had to go through a little rigamaroll answering them.
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.
Someone pointed out amazing advice on how to skip certain checks in this thread, well done.
Any chance you get to regain freedom, by any means, take it.
There are many other ways a person can inflict damage much larger than that without a plane and easier.
We need far more of a culture of "sometimes you gotta take one for the team". This is literally what Charlie Kirk was saying at the exact moment he "took one for the team".
Bad things can happen and you don't have to change stuff just because it happened. Accept negative externalities and don't collectively punish your people for the bad actions of a few.
I've flown many times within the EU/EEA without showing an ID, so I fail to see why traveling within the US should be any different. I've spent most of my life in the US, but the only times I've been in close proximity of terrorist events have been in Norway (Breivik's bomb went off two blocks away from where I worked at the time, and more recently the shooting outside London Pub that killed two and injured multiple others).
I wish I understood why the US feels the need to overreact to everything.
Everything in a US courtroom is adversarial; every witness is cross-examined and their credibility can be questioned.
>every witness is cross-examined and their credibility can be questioned
I think we're talking about different stages. The determination of his qualifications happens before he can be a witness for one party. I'm talking about voir dire. Before we even get him on the stand, there's a separate hearing to determine if he can even be an expert witness, and the opposing party can challenge.
Anyway, there is no ongoing action that I can find. It's only just come into effect, so that's to be expected. As far as an authoritative source for the argument: the person we're discussing is actually the author.
Asking for an ID or passport when embarking/disembarking would be similar to having an ID check at a border, and would therefore be a border control, i.e. no longer free travel.
Of course Schengen countries have the right to temporarily re-enable border checks.
Yes, the law doesn’t require people to wear shirts. But the law also doesn’t require you to be serviced.
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.
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
But I shouldn't have to. That's the issue here. I shouldn't need an ID of any sort. I shouldn't need to provide my name or date of birth. Either I have weapons or dangerous substances on me or I don't. That's all that should matter.
I really hate everything about the TSA, it fundamentally should not even exist as a national entity, and most of their processes and policies are not only illegal but also stupid. But, if you need to travel often there's not a lot you can do about it, you just have to deal with it or not travel. I'm a multiple million miler, been to over 75 different countries and nearly every US state, I travel at least 10 times per year and usually more, what else is there to do about it?
At what point has that stopped literally anything this government has done?
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.
The emperor not only has no clothes, he's shouting that fact at us.
Lou Grant: What religion are you?
Mary: Uh, Mr. Grant, I don't quite know how to say this, but you're not allowed to ask that when someone's applying for a job. It's against the law.
Grant: Wanna call a cop?
And also the $8 trillion he added to the national debt push interest payments to be more than the previous defense budget or Medicare.
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".
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?
I’m interested in this part. Obviously some interpretation is going to happen, but would like to know the law that supports it. Also what (if anything) limits “interpretation” from allowing a 180 degree opposite to what is written to occur.
Asking more generally, not about going into a building I don’t strictly need to.
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.
Edit: I should note that I have one. But lots of people don't, because most people never replace their driver's license card.
To be clear, I'm refraining from judgment on this (despite what the downvotes seem to suggest), I just want to make sure I'm understanding the distinction is not plain driver's license vs. Real ID. I don't like it very much that I have to show my ID (such as passport or European ID card) when I'm on a train in Switzerland. It seems like the majority perspective is that we shouldn't _at all_ be controlling the ID of people who get on a plane, and that's just interesting to me (it would force me to articulate what the difference is between a plane and a train ride).
- what if you're on a no-fly list? wanted criminals?
- underage?
Catching wanted criminals would be nice, but that’s not considered sufficient justification in other places. Requiring an ID to enter the grocery store would help catch wanted criminals too, but few think that would be wise.
I don’t think kids flying when they shouldn’t be is an actual problem. You’d still need a ticket, which costs a substantial amount of money.
Why does anyone in this picture need to associate my ticket with my identity?
- what if you're on a no-fly list? wanted criminals?
- underage?
- passengers on no-fly lists or criminals
- anyone who is underage -- do we let 10 year-olds fly alone? how do you assess age without ID? what if the child gets lost while traveling, and you can't even determine whether the child boarded their flight or not? (if you attach ID to the ticket, then that just seems like ID with extra steps? I could be missing something)
- baggage claim: if there is no link between ticket and person, what's to stop me from claiming anyone's luggage as my own?
I'm not firmly attached to any of these objections, actually -- and perhaps they're not even issues, because I'm missing something fundamental about the assumption. I admit my personal bias is that "taking a plane = passport" even when traveling domestically (I'm not a US citizen), so I have not thoroughly considered the possibility that "taking a plane = taking a bus".
Most children don't carry ID. And most ID for children doesn't even have a photograph. For travel that doesn't require a passport, you just have to deal with asking the child or their travel companions.
> baggage claim: if there is no link between ticket and person, what's to stop me from claiming anyone's luggage as my own?
I can't recall being challenged as to my identity for any luggage I've picked up from the carousel. This was as true in 1997, when it was the focus of a major motion picture [1], as it is today. Regardless, having possession of the matching luggage receipt for a tag should really be sufficient to pick up a bag.
> I admit my personal bias is that "taking a plane = passport" even when traveling domestically (I'm not a US citizen)
That's a reasonable personal bias, but presuming you're subject to mandatory alien registration and you're eighteen or older, you have a legal requirement to register and carry proof of registration. Citizens are not generally required to be registered with the federal government, or to carry proof of registration or other identity documents; although enough things require a social security number that the vast majority of citizens are registered and enumerated by SSA, and enumeration at birth is the default, but a very small number of citizens manage to be born without a birth certificate being issued.
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.