> So it was never about security at all then, was it?
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.
> The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security.
To a great extent, it is security, even if it's mostly security theater, in the sense that it is security theater that people want.
A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where somebody felt uncomfortable boarding a plane because they saw the screening agent asleep at the desk. Pro-tip, trying to explain security theater to the concerned passenger is not the right solution at this point ;-)
Even Bruce Schneier, who coined the term "security theater" has moderated his stance to acknowledge that it can satisfy a real psychological need, even if it's irrational.
We may be more cynical and look upon such things with disdain, but most people want the illusion of safety, even if deep down they know it's just an illusion.
> 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.
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.
> I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing.
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...
I think they're talking about international travel and not having to go through border control within the Schengen space even though you're traveling to different countries.
Yes, but border control isn't security. I don't go through security when I arrive in the US either. (I do have global entry but that just means I usually go through immigration faster.) If I have a connecting flight after arriving in the US I do sometimes have to go through security again with my carryon but that's a function of airport layout.
Just to be clear: I understand the difference. What I couldn’t do was explain to someone who has no concept that customs are not a security check. Or that you don’t need customs for (effectively) internal flights. I suspect part of this is that in the UK, we don’t get many internal flights (beyond connections), so people don’t have an experience of just walking off a plane and out of the airport.
I flew once from Iraq to Sweden (in a private capacity). There was zero controls other than stamping the passport, passport control but no customs inspection. No check of bags and no question of what I might have been doing in Iraq or why I would go from there to Sweden. It was shocking. Just welcome to sweden and off to the street.
Hopefully they haven't changed. It's nice to see a place still left without the paranoia.
Border entry at airports is concerned with a) smuggling and b) immigration control. Passport control may have been all you saw but there was almost certainly heavy profiling and background checking going on behind the scenes. If you had matched a more suspicious pattern than "high-power passport without suspicious history flying an unusual route", you likely would have faced more scrutiny.
> If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt.
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.
The problem with allowing "feels unsafe" to drive policy is that you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866201 ; a lot of Americans (and other nationalities) get that "feels unsafe" feeling when they see a visible minority. Or a Muslim. Or someone who isn't a Muslim but (like a Sikh!) is from the same hemisphere as the Middle East.
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.
Oh for sure, as a non-white, bearded person I've had more than my fair share of "random" screenings!
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?
The moment you encode your biases in policy, you create vulnerabilities.
What I’m hearing is that if I want to get something past your security policy, I need to route it through the Netherlands, possibly via a travel agency.
You don't have to profile people to police, and that's very poor policing. You need to assess actual risk, not fake proxy risk like the color of people's skin.
The problem with profiling is that it sucks both ways. People who are regular degular get fucked for the sake of fake policing, and then real threats are more likely to slip through.
> Nah I disagree. A charter plane with 200 Dutch tourists is lower risk than a flight coming out of Bolivia.
What a weird and random thing to say. There's literally no data that can support for or against and neither have a history of terrorism.
Ironically KLM ('dutch') has had more terrorism per flight than any Bolivian airline. Both minimal (Bolivia 1954, KLM 1973,1994). There's literally no other piece of data between these countries that I could find to support this "lower risk".
Further, the travel advisory for Denmark and Netherlands cite terror risk while Bolivia cites civil unrest.
While being woke is not helpful, neither is 'winging it' based on 'what feels white, ahem, right'. At least do a Google search.
How about a flight coming out of Bolivia with 200 Dutch tourists on board? Is it more or less risky than a flight coming out of the USA with 200 Donald Trumps on board? Is there a list?
It is mostly security, but not to residents of the country. Those can enforce their rights. In my country, I can argue with airport security, and win. Foreigners can’t, so they follow whatever rules. A few times when landing in the US, security was extremely rude, I think just looking for an excuse (things like throwing your laptop a few feet away, while staring at you, etc). You take it bc you’re not home, and the cost of ruining your vacation is not worth it.
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.
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.
It's not about being recognized, it's about when you are asked to be patted down, having the courage to lie "I can't raise my arms over my head", knowing the risk of being caught is at worst not making this flight. For a foreigner it might be getting banned permanently from the country. Same concept as self censorship. You do what you're told and then you go enjoy your vacation.
I don't think I've ever made it through the physical screening without betraying my accent at some point. Sure you can work your way out of an accent, but it's not easy, and requires years of practice, and probably the most reliable (but fuzzy) low-scrutiny indicator of someone who "aint from around here" in a multicultural society where looks are ~useless for such determinations.
I tried to opt out in the UK last time I was there a few years ago. The agent looked at me, confused, and said "so... you don't want to get on the plane?". She told me the the UK didn't allow opt-outs.
This was the only time I've gone through the machine since they were introduced.
> The agent looked at me, confused, and said "so... you don't want to get on the plane?"
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!
I've felt more uncomfortable with the UK Border Force than US CBP. It's been a few years since I've been to the UK, but there was usually more tension for Non-European foreigners at the Airport than non-Americans at the US airports.
Airport security in India is particularly infuriating on this point. Everything gets scanned and fed through over and over again, and everyone gets wanded and patted down over and over again, with maximum ‘fuck you’ to any passenger that dares to question the sanity of restarting your entire screening - because you left your belt on.
Meanwhile, I haven’t even had a western airports metal detector even fire on the same belt in years.
Most western countries also haven't had multiple attempted [0][1][2] and committed [3][4] mass casualty terror attacks nor a direct conventional conflict that for all intents and purposes was a war [5] in the past 2 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.
> And airport security in Israel makes Indian airport security feel like a breeze
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!)
India's airport "security" is one of the best examples of underemployment and security "theatre".
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?
We people are extremely poor judges of our own emotions, particularly in hypotheticals.
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.
Let's not mix "emotions" with "think". If I am afraid (emotion) about something happening, I will be afraid where the maximum damage can be done - in the queue before the security check (think). Most airports optimized that to reduce the queues, but there are still at least tens of people in a very narrow space.
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".
>
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.
What about the real psychological need of not wanting to be surveilled that also quite a lot of people have?
Personally I agree with that sentiment. But unfortunately, as the success of Facebook and Google have shown, most people really don't care about their privacy.
> But unfortunately, as the success of Facebook and Google have shown, most people really don't care about their privacy.
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 you offer the public FDA-inspected cinnamon for a 20% premium over not-inspected-and-may-contain-dangerous-levels-of-lead cinnamon, a lot of people will pay the premium. But a large percentage of people will opt for the cheaper cinnamon.
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.
I would just let the airlines pick if they want TSA screening or not. Customers could buy flights with whatever security level they want.
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...
Security is a classic example of a public good where this doesn't work well. The cheapest ways to secure an airport (sharing queues, staff, protocols, machines, training, threat models) are going to also benefit those who opt out, creating a tragedy of the commons.
Effectiveness and theatricality aside, that wouldn’t work: the risk that the TSA ostensibly controls for is primarily that of planes being used as weapons against non-passengers, and only secondarily passenger security/hijacking.
If it's about satisfying a psychological need, then it should be compared as such to satisfying other psychological needs. Like, say, not getting groped by strangers.
> A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it.
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.
The situation re: psychological safety becomes very apparent when you mention to foreigners how often guns accidentally make it through TSA in peoples bags - and get discovered on screening on the return flight.
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.
Here we are specifically discussing the gold star on a USA driver license. When there is already the whole TSA kwikset fiasco in place. The gold star indicates that a person provided some pieces of paper that may be fabricated to a very busy DMV clerk. This is somehow meant to prove they would never do anything malicious.
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.
So there are two kind of security, one is preventing innocents who mistakenly brings things like gun or flammable liquid like gasoline. The other is preventing people who actually want to do harm like terrorism. There is no doubt TSA is effective for first group. However the evidence against second group is kind of murky as no country has ever caught anyone in the second group till now.
I think it's human nature to point at something you don't like and if it isn't 100% perfect then point to it and say it's flawed and must be taken down.
You are missing an important element. You can decide for yourself whether AI-produced code is worth the price. You don't get to decide whether the TSA is effective enough to pay for it.
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.
I've been applying this principle of behavior to... ahem... current events. I feel like this helps contextualize the behavior of the majority during the current economic and political turmoil. People can't help but pretend this wasn't coming for years, and they certainly can't admit to having a part in it.
Yeah security people (computer or otherwise), are mostly crypto fascists with hardons for humiliating people and telling them what to do.
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.
A growing part of me doesn't care, and doesn't want to coddle fascist mental illness.
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.
What ethnicity are you? I went through an airport -- and nobody else got screened except me. What was special about me? I was the only non-white person in the airport. Upon complaining, this was the response:
> 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 used to have a Sikh manager who wore a turban. Whenever we traveled together, he would get "randomly" stopped. While they were patting him down, he would inevitably chuckle and say something like "So what are the odds of being 'randomly' selected 27 times in a row?"
I don't know the specifics of the process for selection, but I can confidently say that the process is bigoted.
Same thing used to happen to me when I had dreadlocks. Made the same joke too. "what are the odds I'd get randomly selected 100% of the time I go through a checkpoint..."
Besides being racist this is kind of dumb. If you’re going to bring down the plane you’re defo not going to look like someone who gets randomly selected 100% of the time. Even the 9/11 terrorists knew this and shaved their beard instead of looking like the fundamentalists scumbags they were.
In proper English usage it would only be a 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)
check if it was unreasonable to suspect a Sikh of carrying a Kirpan.
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.
As a white guy who was caught accidentally carrying a large knife once through security, at the bottom of a carry-on backpack I'd had since high school, I don't think it's in any way essential to use racial or ethnic markers to figure out whether someone is taking something dangerous onto a plane. I didn't even know I was trying to bring a knife onto a plane at a regional airport. There's no reason to think that Sikhs are explicitly going out of their way to hide something.
Interesting that none of these comments seem to be questioning why we can’t just carry a small pocketknife on the plane. We used to be able to before 9/11. The 9/11 hijackings only worked because the policy was comply, land, and let the negotiators do their work. Suicide attacks using commercial airlines just wasn’t a thing. We now have armored locking cockpit doors and no airplane would give up control to hijackers anymore. United Flight 93 was already taken over and heard about the World Trade Center and they revolted.
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”.
Welcome to the club. I inadvertently traveled with not one, but two large box cutters in my carryon satchel for at least 20 flights before I discovered them while searching for some swag. I put them in there for a booth setup in Vegas years prior. Sent a completely calm, even sympathetic report to the powers that be, got put on the DNF list for my troubles.
Still screened and detained 100 percent of the time, sometimes for hours, sometimes having to surrender personal devices, decades later.
> Sent a completely calm, even sympathetic report to the powers that be, got put on the DNF list for my troubles.
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.
Yeah, if I had a "Crap, what was that doing in there?" I'd be very quiet about it.
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.
Some of us genuinely believe all that "cops are there to help you, so try to be helpful to cops" stuff we were raised on. Right up until the point when you actually try to do it and find out how things really work...
You sent a report saying you were not searched for 20 times and now you are searched all the time? Has it been over 20 times that you have been searched?
Isn’t that what the scanners are for? To find large metallic objects? Why do you need additional “random” screenings behind that? Or are you saying the scanners don’t work to find even obvious weapons? If so, we should get rid of the scanners.
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.
A person can get mistakenly (or not) flagged for special screening and get it over and over again - it happened to me many years ago.
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.
Not defending the practice but the Mohammed thing has a possible origin that isn't directly racist. The common names among Muslims and their propensity to appear on various watch lists lead to a lot of false alarms on those with those names.
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.
Same. Every border crossing. Every flight. Every interaction with police. I always get checked. I always get flagged. I always have by bags opened and my car searched coming back from Canada with officers holding large powerful machine guns and rifles in case I twitch to hard.
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 am a white male and have TSA pre-check and after walking through the metal detector, maybe one out of several times I get randomly selected for the body scanner. I've never gotten the dreaded SSSS though. I've very rarely traveled alone not on a work trip and never alone on a one way ticket so maybe that helps.
I get it not infrequently when travelling from europe. It's annoying that they pretend that "oh this is random" .. I'm even going up to the airport employees at hte gate and telling them "I'm told I'm here to make new friends today"
It's screwed up that skin color is a marker that would lead an ignorant provincial quasi-cop to assume someone is of a particular ethnicity, and even more so that that ethnicity would lead them to believe an individual adheres to a belief system that might lead them to blow up an aircraft. Very poor set of assumptions and flawed tooling, to say the least.
I once found myself in the "random extra screening" waiting room in LHR before boarding an El Al flight to Tel Aviv, everyone else in the room was Muslim. Random indeed...
When all you see is color, everything different is racism.
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?
Many ICE agents are Latino but it doesn't stop them racially profiling other Latinos.
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 was so confused last time I traveled as I watched this brown skinned family getting shaken down for ID by TSA and they literally just waived me past and said didn't need ID. Mind you I've never not been asked to show ID to TSA before this.
Curious about the downvotes here, it's 100% relevant to the conversation and is personal experience. I imagine it's tone policing to ensure we don't criticize the techo-facist edgelord take over?
Today was the second time in a year I went into one and my crotch got flagged because of my pants zipper. nothing in my pockets. no belt. nothing hidden. etc.
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?
Almost always my back sweat from wearing a backpack shows up on the body scanner. Then a TSA agent has to put their gloved hand on my sweaty back. What a shit job lol.
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.
It's hard to put into words, but you're eroding the social contract through your actions. People with conditions get accused of faking it all the time, and it sounds like you're actually faking it.
If he was doing that to get faster treatment at a hospital or even just a restaurant or something then I'd agree. But by doing it to get faster treatment at the TSA check he's literally doing everyone else a favour.
The argument is that if tricks like this were to become widespread, they may start requiring certified medical documentation (or other hurdles) for said faster treatment, making life even more annoying for people with genuine issues.
In that case would actually increase security, right? Ans with genuine medical issues it should be no problem to get the necessary documentation. Either way, the consumers win.
If they opted for a pat down for 6 years, then faster treatment clearly wasn’t the goal. Metal detector + swabbing is not faster than the scanner either.
I’m genuinely confused by this take. Admittedly my knowledge of exactly how the TSA operates is quite shallow, but don’t they xray your bags and scan for weapons on your body?
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?
hahah. I never really comprehended what "I'm going to slide my hand up until I meet resistance" meant. I guess it depends which way the camel's nose is facing, what kinda resistance they're gonna get.
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.
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.
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.
Fair! I was going to go back and edit, but my comment was more for other people who read your comment thinking it was a good idea for them to do (assuming they can raise their hands over their heads).
Since the TSA cannot force you to prove it - after all, they're not medical personnel to evaluate it and not willing to risk your injury - whether someone lies becomes irrelevant.
If they decide to follow up to make an example of you, they can easily record a video of you until you raise your arms over your head somewhere later in the airport or on the flight. You won’t have a good time proving your case.
Just because you can raise your hands over your head doesn't mean it isn't painful.
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.
it's legal to say "I can't raise my arms over my head". it is then prohibited to ask people about disabilities, should somebody think to inquire. I was not saying "tell this to a judge", i was telling HN that yall were making assuumptions. (assuumptions makes ass-of-you-and-you)
And it’s been confirmed by red teams sneaking weapons through checkpoints that it’s not even doing the basic job. Lots of hassle and expense for little to no gain in security.
So... You're lying about having a health condition in a loud and obnoxious way? Not sure what the point is.
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.
1) its okay to the lie to the TSA and troll them. the TSA is just low skilled jobs program.
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.
You sound insufferable. Why do they need to be a moron? As you state, designed as a jobs program. So, these workers are low paying government employees who likely have trouble attaining a job or maintaining high job security. You likely live a far more privileged life than these workers. You think they want to do this job? And you call them a moron for simply attempting to do their job?
This is brilliant. I continue to opt out and get the pat down every single time. Which is annoying because they deliberately make it slow and anxiety inducing with your bags are out of sight for quite a while.
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.
I did this about a dozen times until I had too many TSA agents become extremely shitty and hostile towards me. The last two times they were making threats as I was walking away that they were going to "get me". I decided my protest opt out excuse wasn't worth dealing with attitude. They usually also made me stand there and wait sort of blocking everyone for 5-10 minutes until they even called someone over
Lots of society is like this. For example, red lights. I run them all the time and nothing happens. You just have to pay attention. It's why the police won't ticket you in SF. It doesn't matter. If anyone else complains you just yell "Am I being detained" a few times and then hit the accelerator. Teslas are fast. They can't catch you.
Another pro tip is to not pay at restaurants. If you can leave the restaurant fast enough before they give you the bill, they must have forgotten to charge you and sucks for them! The trick is not to bring bags so you can fake a trip to the toilet!
if you're not joking, actions like these are why we can't have nice things in society, it's cancerous behavior and just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
I think the two comments above yours are poking fun at the guy who is committing a felony by lying to federal agents. They're just making it obvious what he's doing is really shitty, anti-social behavior.
You are grossly misinformed and making an assumption.
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.
This is a scam that the GOP has convinced many of, that taking from the government commons is the right thing to do. But the GOP is the embodiment of a low trust society. I'd rather live in a high trust society.
I'd also rather live in a high trust society, but that's impossible with the government that we have (and it's not just Trump, although he has certainly turned our slow creep towards authoritarianism into a speedrun).
> 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.
So "Just don't be gay/smoke weed, it's not legal, if you don't like it there's a process to get that changed" is the kind of viewpoint that's compatible with your ideology then?
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.
> So "Just don't be gay/smoke weed, it's not legal, if you don't like it there's a process to get that changed" is the kind of viewpoint that's compatible with your ideology then?
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.
Holy shit that's genius, but I do worry about the minor degradation of respect for actual disabled folks if it becomes 'weaponized' in a widespread way
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.
I should not need to show an anonymous TSA agent my genitals, even if they are in black and white on some monitor theyre viewing in some back room, to get on a plane.
I could ask the same serious question, why should I have to? There is zero reason to suspect me of being a suicidal maniac. Should we have such scanners to walk into a busy store or bus or subway system? Why don't private pilots and passengers have such screenings?
Tangential: Here in India we have security guards with hand-held metal detectors in malls, railway stations, and urban transit rails (metro) stations.
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.
I don't think anyone in the US really cares about metal detectors, humans don't naturally contain metal and it is done completely hands off with no extra visual or biometric information or saved data. Plenty of people in this thread who opted out of other security measures still walked through a metal detector without any special note. Court houses and police stations have often have metal detectors that even a Senator or President would have to walk through. The same cannot be said of direct imaging of your body though or facial recognition or anything. If you wouldn't put your children through the process to go into school each day then it seems completely bonkers to require it for any form of mass transit.
It used to be normal in the U.S. to walk people to the gate until 9/11.
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).
Pre 9/11 you could go through (useless) security without a ticket but longer ago there wasn't even security. And in some places the "gate" was...a gate. In a fence. So being at the gate meant walking from the street up to the fence. Good times.
Post 9/11 you could get a waiver from the ticket counter to escort someone thru security all the way to the gate. Dunno if that's a thing anymore, but I had them print out a paper and showed it at security several times in the mid 2000s.
A gate pass is a thing to pick up or drop off people who will be flying as unaccompanied minors. I don’t what other circumstances allow their issue, but when I did it a couple years ago, everyone seemed to know the process, so it’s not that rare.
Studies have all come out clean on pacemakers and mmWave. No detectable interference in the hardware or on an EKG while in a mmWave scanner.
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).
Perhaps I haven't gotten a representative sample, but in 100% of the content I've seen from self-described "first amendment auditors", they're acting unpleasant and suspicious for absolutely no reason other than provoking a reaction. To me this seems like antisocial behavior that degrades rather than supports First Amendment protections. I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.
> I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.
It strikes me that the first clause of this sentence and the last one are unambiguously contradictory.
I don't think so? The behavior of these auditors is not speech in any meaningful sense; they're not trying to communicate any message, they're just trying to make people around them uncomfortable. It's just hard to draw a clear line that would prohibit their behavior without chilling lawful speech.
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.
> The behavior of these auditors is not speech in any meaningful sense;
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.
First Amendment auditors have usually been attention seeking individuals making click bait YouTube videos. It's been interesting seeing the transformation from that to what we're seeing with people monitoring ICE.
To be honest, I watch very little of that content, so I had no idea. If they're unkind, then obviously that sucks.
But walking around with cameras maintaining the unequivocal right to record what happens in the commons seems like a very important and thankless task.
> I, too, dislike walking far. Here’s how I faked my way into a handicap parking tag.
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.
That’s fine and it is of course security theater / jobs program. I was put off by the feigning of disability to avoid a scanner and/or some inconvenience. This kind of behavior is okay, even great, but please come up with a more tasteful way. Otherwise I hope it’s a parody.
It may be many things, but I very much doubt the motivation is a money grab. A few people paying $45 isn't lining the pockets of some government official, or plugging a hole in any possible budget.
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.
There is no legal requirement to show id or answer any questions to establish identification before flying. In other words there is no extra work required by law which the fee would cover.
The TSA is literally doing all this extra work though, whether or not you think it's required by law. They're not just pocketing the $45 and then blindly waving you ahead.
Let's be more precise. The TSA has created extra work for themselves, and are charging us for it, whether it's legally required or not (because they pretend that it is).
Sure. But it's not "pretend". It's genuine regulatory policy they've created because they believe it's necessary for security, and this has been a decades-long project. The article is arguing they don't ultimately have the legal authority to make that regulatory policy. Maybe that'll go to court and be tested, maybe they'll win and maybe they'll lose. If they lose, maybe Congress will pass explicit legislative authorization the next day, and maybe that'll be brought to court, and the Supreme Court will have to decide if it violates the 14th amendment or not. But it's not "fake work", it's actually doing a thing.
No, it's not "regulatory policy". It's been done entirely with some combination of secret "Security Directives" and "rulemaking by press release". As the article and the linked references explain, the TSA never issued any regulations, published any of the required notices, or obtained any of the approvals that would have been required even if Congress had passed an (unconstitutional) authorizing statute (which it didn't).
No. Policy or regulation would have a basis in law. This administration has aptly demonstrated their contempt for the law. Nobody gives a shit about some grunt federal employee getting extra work.
This is just a way to compel compliance and to push the agenda for ID with higher documentary requirements, ultimately to deny the vote.
I mean I could hire someone to continuously dig and refill the a hole in the ground. That would certainly be them doing a thing, but it would also definitely be fake work. There's been plenty of rhetoric thrown around but no real evidence has been produced that suggests the TSA isn't engaging in a bit of circular digging at the taxpayer's expense with this.
As I mentioned[0] a few months ago after the TSA announced the $45 "fee":
...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...
And now the birds are coming home to roost. No real surprise there, IMHO.
I don't know what you mean by "full patdown treatment", but they're absolutely tracking down your information in databases and interviewing you about it. See replies to:
It's not just a patdown. They take you to a phone booth that has a direct line to some portion of the FBI IIRC, and they ask you a bunch of questions to confirm your identity. At least this is what happened to me about ten years ago when I lost my wallet in a different state and needed to fly home.
... and the law in most states requires only that you give your name and possibly your DOB to the authorities upon detainment. So as a purely academic exercise, what can they even do if you refuse to answer beyond that? Obviously in practice they will fuck with you or just straight up violate the constitution, but theoretically I'm unsure how they can continue to seize you after that.
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.
... if you aren't detained you are free to go. And if you are free to go, you are free to stay, unless the property owner has trespassed you. TSA doesn't own the airport, at least in my state. So how can they trespass you from the airport or otherwise continue to detain you from moving forward?
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.
You are free to leave. You aren't free to go wherever you want. You aren't free to go into the employee areas, or out onto the runway. If you don't clear security, you aren't allowed in the secure portion of the airport. Not allowing entry into an area is not "detaining you from moving forward".
If the government is requiring the property owner to submit to TSA, that's a public act and not a private one, which means it is bound by the bill of rights and most importantly the 4th 5th and maybe even 6th amendment. The government cannot punish you for exercising your rights by refusing you to move forward into the private place you could otherwise lawfully go. If you can't go to the employee area, that's because certain individuals are trespassed from going there from the private owner, not because the government is forcing it. If you can't go to the boarding area, because of the TSA by public act strong arming the property owner, that is not an act of the private owner, and if it's done because you refuse to answer questions it is a violation of your rights.
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.
Constitutional right of access, which as you say doesn't exist, isn't the same as allowing access but conditioning it upon you relinquishing your bill of rights.
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 TSA is violating the law, and the constitution, and making it up as they go.
Just wait until you find out how the feds enacted the 55mph speed limit or are using the threat of revoking Medicare funding for hospitals that perform certain medical procedures that the feds would like to have not happen...
Presumably the airport or airline has agreed to (or would agree if asked to) have TSA decide whether you are “free to go that way, towards the airplanes”.
You are already free to go that other way (towards the street), but not necessarily free to go the way you want.
As far as I can tell, a person is free to go if they refuse screening: They won't be getting on a flight, but they can just leave. There's no detainment involved in this process.
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?
A better analogy would be a legally protected right to show up to work dressed in street clothes, your boss imposes an illegal requirement to wear a specific uniform, and then attempts to charge you if you show up without one.
It's not millions of people, most people get Real ID. In the context of airport security budgets, it's not that much. And it's used for hiring the additional staff required and putting together the identity verification systems they use.
> It's not millions of people, most people get Real ID
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
What states do you have to pay for your Real ID every time? Yes, you have to pay to renew your license or photo ID, but the Real ID fee in my state (PA) is one-time. Renewal costs are the same whether it's a Real ID or not.
to add, fee for Real ID marker on Limited Term license covers 5 years, so if one gets lets say a license for 2 years (& had to pay for 5 years), the next renewals/updates within those 5 years are free.
As of the imposition of start of this new fee/fine, about 200,000 people a day fly without ID or without REAL-ID: https://papersplease.org/wp/2025/05/28/200000-people-a-day-f... - At $45 a pop, that would bring in >$3B a year. "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
That's a really disappointing source. The headline is '200,000 people a day fly without REAL-ID', which starts out quite interesting.
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 most recent press release from the TSA claims that it's now 6% of passengers not showing ID or not showing REAL ID: https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/12/01/tsa-intro... So down only slightly since May 2025 when they started "enforcing" a "requirement" to show REAL-ID.
So, 1 to 2 billion dollars, depending on how many round trips are above or below 10 days. You're right, I thought this was real money, like 3 billion. But 1 to 2 billion? You find that between the couch cushions every week. I'm so glad people like you are out there debunking these ridiculous claims.
This is such an odd point that some of you are arguing. You’re nitpicking numbers (some of you incorrectly) and sidestepping the main issue entirely. None of you are providing sources, you’re just handwaving away saying “this will barely impact anybody” basically. It’s such an odd argument and I don’t get the point.
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.
“Most” people can have it and there’d still be millions (tens of millions, even over 100mill) of people who don’t. Multiple states don’t even require it. That guarantees several million people right there.
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.
America only has 340 million people to begin with. Then, half the population doesn't even fly in a given year. Those that do are mostly aware of the RealID requirement and either got it whenever they last renewed their driver's license, or renewed early because their DMV kept mailing them warnings about needing to do so if they wanted to fly. Yes, most people who fly either have it, or are getting it before their next flight. Part of the $45 fee is also to incentivize people to get the RealID, as that will obviously be cheaper for them over the long run.
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.
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 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 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.
> 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.
I mean, that's one agency making a highly contested claim for obvious controversial political reasons.
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.
CLEAR members are going out of their way to register their info in a biometric identification system. I don't think the people avoiding REAL IDs are the same demographic.
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.
It's not a money grab, it's a tactic to encourage compliance. This isn't evidence of a change in security posture, you've always been able to travel without a Real ID. They've been pushing Real ID for more than a decade, 90% of people have one already anyway, the remaining stragglers simply don't care because there have never been any consequences.
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.
Exactly. I wish it was about money. It's about surveillance. The TSA even flatly says the quiet part out loud. "The fee is to make you _comply_."
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.
s/tactic to encourage compliance/blatant coercion/
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.
It was about immigration. I remember around 2015 when I was on F1 visa - in Michigan - you could get drivers license and it would expire when your visa expired. However my few lucky friends in NY/NJ/CA? Just got blanket 5yr expiry on their licenses from the day of renewal.
I.E. their visas could expire well before their ‘IDs’ could.
RealID was introduced to eliminate these discrepancies. And to get a realId now you need to show your visa documents/approvals.
I knew the Real ID requirements wouldn't be enforced, at least here in California, about a year before, after I saw the requirements: California can't enforce it because it would prevent too many undocumented people from flying.
Although, I thought it would just be delayed indefinitely. I suppose it effectively has been.
My wife, who was on a H1B visa and managed to fly without an ID a few years back. They took her to some side room, asked a bunch of questions and looked her up based on name, DOB, address etc.
TSA pre-check, Global Entry, and Clear _infuriate_ me. It is privatization of public transportation and a net negative for society. In New York, JFK has closed off half of the security entrances for priority lanes, meaning a majority of passengers are forced into 50% of the entrances. The airport was built with state+federal funds, and now tax-paying residents are second-class to those who can afford $100/year. It's not even the amount, it's the principle.
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.
That's because many Americans are against national ID at all cost for some reason. The very same Americans think that immigrants need to have their "I'm legal" folder with them at all times.
What are the practical benefits we're supposed to get from the RealID system? All I've ever heard is "national security" which is the excuse for every harmful thing.
> The very same Americans think that immigrants ...
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.
Blatant strawman. I'm a concrete counterexample if you insist on having one. The federal government should not have any involvement in routine photo ID. If that makes certain things difficult I see that as a feature, not a bug.
I had the option to get a "Real ID" the last time I renewed my driver's license, and did not. I forget which stupid bit of paper gave me trouble, but I had a valid passport (the Mother of All IDs), which was both insufficient to get a "Real ID" and sufficient to fly. It's a joke, a nuisance, and now a revenue source.
You're not going to believe it, but if you already have a passport - you don't need Real ID (in ideal world). I only got Real ID because I want to have zero questions about my immigration status.
>You're not going to believe it, but if you already have a passport - you don't need Real ID (in ideal world). I only got Real ID because I want to have zero questions about my immigration status.
DHS says they don't consider RealID to be reliable "proof" of immigration status[0][1], so you might consider rethinking that strategy.
A general reminder that every extra obstacle to getting a valid ID (or voting) disproportionately impacts the poor. They often lack the paperwork, the free time, and the money to deal with the extra process involved.
Absolutely. With Real ID, the biggest pain for a lot of people is proof of residency.
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.
You need two documents for proof. It's really not that hard. Poor that can't produce these documents probably can't afford a plane ticket either, so how is it a problem? Y'all have some weird ideas about how poor people are incapable of have two pieces of paper that have: 1) their name 2) their address
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.
Rather you lack perspective on the wider world. It is not uncommon to have an "unofficial" living situation and work under the table. In that scenario which documents would have your name and address on it? Will the DMV accept a purchase order from Amazon? Get real.
Even when I worked under the table and was out of status, I always had enough documents to get Real ID (but couldn't due to status).
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".
That's an interesting point about the bank statement. However you still need a second document IIUC. And to even open an account in the first place won't you need similar documentation? I've never tried opening one while in that position - I've always just brought my passport in with me while cursing KYC laws.
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.)
> And don't get me started with all the paid express security lanes. Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.
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.
The TSA are literally terrorists. Their job isn't to stop terrorism, their job is to keep memory of terrorism fresh in the public's mind, to keep them afraid, to constantly remind people that they must be subservient to the federal government or else more people will die. It's flat out terrorism.
Or the fact that you have to re-up for Pre-TSA -- they already know who we are, they already have their databases, it's intentional money grab. But then again, so is PreTSA...
No. In the early 2000s we called it security theater. Do we think that somehow they went from theater to serious? Hell no, it's all downward spiral. I constantly pen-test the TSA using humorous methods while traveling, it's a complete joke.
> Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.
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?
What are these checks and scrutiny and how are they applied in the time available? Given the time available is not great ("I'm on the next flight") and the amount of money is modest if humans are involved I'm intrigued to know what could be done that $45 would cover.
It's a database lookup that takes 5-15 minutes once you get to an available officer, but then depending on what it returns you may need additional screening, which will also need to wait for someone available.
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.
To me this makes no sense at all. The visual (or computational) ID check takes a second. Why is a manual entry of someone's name/DOB something that takes 5-15 minutes? This is a process control issue, not a technical problem.
You're misunderstanding. What's preventing me from finding someone on Facebook who looks kind of similar to me, finding out their address and phone number, and then claiming I'm them but forgot my ID? Or if I'm a serious criminal planning ahead, applying for a legitimate driver's license in that other person's name with easily-forgeable documentation that less strict DMV's accept when they aren't RealID?
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.
How about we restrict airport and aircraft access based on individual's ability to do harm, rather than on the information in some trusted database? It sure seems like the major incidents in my lifetime would have been better prevented by keeping people with guns and bombs out than people with poor paperwork skills…
If you are able to follow simple written instructions and enter several pieces of information on a keyboard in less than five minutes... why would you work for the TSA?
This happened to me once, they just brought out someone (supervisor?) who asked questions about what addresses I've lived at, other similar questions I'd probably only know the answer to.
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.
Data brokers already know everything about every American so the TSA is just buying existing information from them. Then they can quickly quiz you on the information to verify that you are you. https://network.id.me/article/what-is-knowledge-based-verifi...
what the fuck extra checks and scrutiny could they possibly need? They already go through an x-ray machine and get molested before we get on the plane, "real ID" or not.
There are more criteria to get through security than "not carrying prohibited items". Several of those are dependent on identity, which is why they verify identity.
It seems to me that all those other consideration only matter for international travel, while for domestic travel its an obvious waste of time from every angle.
It's not that they'd pay individual employees more, it's that they'd hire more workers to account for the fact that their existing workers are tied up doing extra verification.
I wasn't flying 25 years ago but I'm not sure what you mean, or how that's relevant actually. The point is just that it takes them more time to do the "extra screening" if you don't have your ID than the standard screening if you did have your ID.
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.
> 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.
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).
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 think the comparison to the propiska system is incorrect. This Soviet system heavily controlled internal migration and was what ultimately dictated where someone was permitted to live. You couldn't relocate without one, and having this permission was tied to all sorts of local services. This system anchored people to where they were, and usually barred them from moving unless they had a good reason to.
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.
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.
Real ID/Drivers License being a proof of address is laughable. In my state (NY) they accept the following as proof of address for getting a new Real ID:
- 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.
It should be noted, and I don't understand why people aren't angry about this: Account numbers unredacted on the statements. The numbers are redacted the documentation gets rejected.
It's hardly proof of address. At best, I'd say it's proof of state residency.
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.
I certainly got a new plastic ID card within 2 weeks after filing the change-of-address form on DMV website, with a new address on it. They sent it to the new address. But mine was not RealID compliant (nor before nor after).
From what I've heard, the no-ID process does indeed feature additional screening. I think the passenger would fill out a form and the TSA would cross-check it with their information. This was free prior to the new ID push, but since now people need a special ID to fly instead of using their normal one, I'm guessing they made the process cost extra to disincentivize people from sticking with their IDs and just doing the free manual process every time. I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm just saying that this is probably why they decided to try this.
Saying that there is “no legal requirement to show an ID” is truthy but misleading. Federal law gives the TSA authority over “screening” passengers: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/44901 (“The Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration shall provide for the screening of all passengers and property, including United States mail, cargo, carry-on and checked baggage, and other articles, that will be carried aboard a passenger aircraft operated by an air carrier or foreign air carrier in air transportation or intrastate air transportation.”).
That means the TSA can do whatever it can get away with labeling “screening.” It doesn’t matter that Congress didn’t specifically require showing IDs. That’s just one possible way of doing “screening.” Under the statute, the TSA is not required to do screening any particular way.
> The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA), which is set law, provides a “complete defense” against any penalty for failing to respond to any collection of information by a Federal agency that hasn’t been approved by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), isn’t accompanied by a valid PRA notice, or doesn’t display a valid OMB Control Number.
As the article works through, as a Federal Agency the TSA cannot just label stuff "screening" and demand money, or at least, they can't do so and then make you pay it.
as the PRA outlines (and the article goes through), publishing notice to the Federal Register does not suffice to get around the PRA, it is just a step in the process.
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.
Would declining to let you through security actually be a "penalty" (legally speaking), though? There are a ton of things you need to show papers for in the US; I can't imagine that all of them were pre-approved by the OMB.
You seem to be under the impression that the word "screening" means TSA can do whatever it wants. When in fact, if you click on the link under the word "Screening" in the own link you posted, there is a definition provided.
> (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 seem to be under the impression that the word "screening" means TSA can do whatever it wants.
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.
And reading further...The Administrator may approve additional methods to ensure that the cargo does not pose a threat to transportation security and to assist in meeting the requirements of this subsection.
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.
Yes, I did not want to copy paste the entire site. You did not post the full definition either and clipped a part of it as well.
> 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.
Chevron just said that courts must defer to any reasonable interpretation of the statute by the agency. Getting rid of that just means that courts get to decide what words like “screening” mean. It doesn’t mean Congress needs to explicitly approve every method.
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.
To be fair, that's not exactly what Loper Bright says. It holds that the courts should read the statute independently and not assume that Agency rules or procedures are prima facie controlling where the statute is ambiguous.
That's not what the end of Chevron deference means. It means that if Congress didn't specifically approve this method, a court may find it illegal much more easily than was previously the case. The deference in "Chevron deference" was from the courts towards administrative agencies.
It doesn’t bypass the screening. It’s one screening method that’s cheaper to implement because the work is done by the Real ID verification, and another screening method that costs money to do different checks.
You have the right to travel without ID in the U.S. The TSA may demand it, and may tell you it's legally required, but that doesn't make that true.
"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…."
Explain to me how qualified immunity is better than any ill it is supposed to address? And how is it that if you sue the government and win, then the judgement doesn't automatically award reasonable legal fees?
The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs. Their jobs require them to do things that people don't want them to do, like making you pay taxes or go to jail for committing crimes. They are prominent targets and can easily spend their entire career fighting off complaints.
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.
> The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs.
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!
They might be defended by their agency (though being "in the right" doesn't appear to be a pre-requisite for that anyway). But they would/could still be subject to lawsuit after lawsuit, which hardly suits the intended goal of government, does it?
Poor people already cannot afford most legal services, and (other than a very small percentage of cases brought on a volunteer or nearly-volunteer basis at the goodwill of law firms) very rarely file suit without legal fees sought in restitution. Of those that don’t, it’s understood that recouping legal fees from lower income clients is far from guaranteed due to bankruptcy risk.
Still. I understand the officers having "qualified immunity". But not the agency.
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.
If the agency has become corrupt, tweaking immunity isn't going to fix it. Only voters can solve that by saying clearly "no, this is not the agency we want."
If that is what the voters want, then the victim minority can only reconsider their role in the social contract.
I do not understand officers having qualified immunity. They are armed for of the government and they have much lower expectations placed on them the normal citizens.
The fact that cops can break laws, actually harm people and then make prosecution basically impossible is bonkers.
It’s a sticky issue. Without QI, it seems very plausible that many law enforcement departments would be seriously hamstrung by continual waves of legal action and thus cost taxpayers a lot more to operate effectively. Not only would many people use a court of law as a fallback from the court of public opinion, but the legal industry would support this given the lucrative monetary and reputational advantages of suing the government.
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.
Especially when the implication in the article is the police tried to delete a video from evidence -- and still ended up getting to hide behind qualified immunity.
Two separate things. Qualified immunity is just immunity from individual liability afforded to government agents when conducting government business, as long as they are conducting it properly.
It might be true, it might not. Probably more useful to say "as long as they are conducting it properly" seems to have little impact on any of cases in which such immunity has been an issue.
Have you ever looked at legal proceedings involving criminals? It’s 95% noise and 5% signal. Criminals are, in general, bad people with a lot of time on their hands, and without qualified immunity you’d totally swamp the legal system with frivolous lawsuits.
Flying domestically is usually cheaper than driving once you get past the range of a tank of gas or two. Also, RealID isn't fully permeated yet - my state won't fully phase out non-RealIDs until 2029.
"once you get past the range of a tank of gas or two."
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.
The point is that it's nonsensical to say flying is cheaper than driving. Its oranges vs apple. Apples and oranges are fruit, flying and driving are transportation. But they're totally different.
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.
I would not describe travelling alone as "very specific circumstances." It is extremely common. 70% of all car trips are solo, and the average number of occupants for all car trips is 1.5. That you can get more bang for your buck driving if you have enough passengers and luggage doesn't change the fact plenty of people don't.
You are entirely right, because 98%+ trips in a car are commutes or errands that average 6 miles in distance.
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.
And even if there is an airport, it costs a lot more to fly into a small captive airport. For instance my parents live in South GA where the local airport has three commercial flights a day all on Delta and all fly to and from ATL
Yeah, that's part of what I'm getting at. Smaller airports can be much more expensive and lack options for transportation to the final destination. For exurb or rural destinations a rental car may be required.
I'm in Oregon, and that's the case - about $30 extra. More people than you think don't have access to supplemental documentation required to meet extra requirements – people who don't have current travel documents, people who've just moved into town, people who don't have current documentation of address (e.g. the homeless, people in the foster care system, etc.)
It's pragmatic to have: plenty of people don't or can't fly, and the cost of supporting this option is marginal.
> More people than you think don't have access to supplemental documentation required to meet extra requirements
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.
Traffic signs have symbols and shapes. You are allowed to drive in the US with an international drivers license if you don’t speak English. Are they going to arrest someone who doesn’t speak English and got a license in another state?
Traffic signs are readable by almost anybody regardless of English language skills. A vision test is much more safety-valid than an English language test.
I disagree that traffic signs are readable regardless of language skills. Yes, it's just a matter of developing recognition for simple pictorial signs. You just have to learn it. If I put a French "No Vehicles" sign in Florida, nobody is going to have a clue what it means, even though there are no words on it, and that's dangerous.
Not recognizing or incorrectly interpreting "Crash I-9 N/B Exp Right 2 Lanes Closed Merge Left 2000 ft" is also dangerous, right?
California offers both. I renewed my license last year. I opted for a non Real ID version because I could renew online rather than spend hours at the DMV.
Some states, including mine, don't offer RealID at all, but instead an "enhanced driver license" that is accepted alongside RealID. I don't even have that, because I already have a passport card, so there's no reason to spend the extra money.
yes, if there's one thing the working poor are known for, it's successfully extracting money from their employers. if uber wants you to rideshare, they should buy you a car, right?
If the answer is more than "zero" then the fee is harmful. Since I've been in similar positions (specifically as a contractor, where I had to front-load expenses and submit for reimbursement), it seems pretty likely to me.
Yes so we are going to optimize an entire system for this mythical “working poor” business traveler?
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 wasn't aware anyone had made the argument that this was an attempt to optimize anything. It's pretty obvious nobody's optimized anything in the TSA, ever.
Undocumented immigrants can have authentic, non-"RealID" ids, as things such as drivers licenses are the purview of the states, and infringement there upon is an attack on their constitutional sovereignty. California, for example, is perfectly happy to give out drivers licenses to anybody who can establish residency and pass the test, since there's no sense in creating a double jeopardy situation wherein because someone has committed one crime (illegally immigrating to California), they are forced to commit an additional crime (driving without a license). It's the same reason the IRS gives you a spot to declare your bribes and other illegal income.
> It's the same reason the IRS gives you a spot to declare your bribes and other illegal income.
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.
The accepted legal method of declaring illicit gains on your tax documents is pleading the 5th amendment for specific questions related to the source of the funds. Fun fact, you can also take deduct business expenses for many expensees related to illegal activities if you otherwise qualify for them, for example legal fees. There are specific restrictions but they are surprisingly narrow.
The IRS doesn’t ask for specifics so I don’t think it’s legally an admission of a crime. Saying “I took a bribe” doesn’t make you legally guilty of taking a bribe. You’d have to say when, from who, and for what.
I sure do want to get rid of the entire concept of "economy" class.
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’s annoying we don’t offer passport cards for free to people as a national government credential. The cost is similar to this fee, and your app and photo could be taken by TSA right at the checkpoint. You head to your flight after identity proofed, and your passport card could then be mailed to you.
It is, but I think that's a separate issue. There's no authorization, let alone a mandate, to prove identity to move about. The mission, ostensibly, is to make air travel safe by ensuring that passengers don't bring dangerous items onto the plane. It's not to track who is going where.
You're right. I vaguely remember a faux hijacking (or a real hijacking but not with the intent to do harm) wherein an unarmed man caused a flight diversion to seek asylum in Italy. He entered the cockpit while the door was open for service. I don't remember the details, but now I'm very curious if identification would have resulted in successful interdiction. It certainly would not have prevented 9/11 since those perps were known to both domestic and foreign intelligence. So what do we do?
To bring it back to the root question: how does REAL ID mitigate these threats?
Because it helps the TSA definitively identify whether someone is one of those people who are known threats. Prior to this standard, there were hundreds of different standards for IDs all with different levels of validation and there was no requirement for any cooperation in sharing information useful to validate them.
I didn't personally experience it (I was too young), but I think that was part of "the mission" since pre-9/11. The point of the ID check is to make sure the boarding ticket and ID match.
You could even double them up as government issued voter-ID and save all that hassle every 4 years. Or the current round of random stop-and-search going on...
The people eligible for passports are not the same group of people eligible for voter id since there are a few jurisdictions where non-citizens can vote in certain elections. Voting is also a responsibility of the states (even at the federal level), so there isn't really such thing as a federal voter id since each state has different eligibility requirements for voters that don't necessarily align with passport eligibility. Additionally, passport cards aren't interchangeable with passports in most countries.
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"
FWIW, REAL-ID is not about U.S. citizenship: A passport issued by any country is considered "compliant" with the REAL-ID Act for air travel or any other purpose, regardless of the person's U.S. immigration status. Some politicians seem to have deluded themselves to think that requiring REAL-ID will stop "illegal aliens" from flying. But it won't. Many foreigners in the U.S. (regardless of U.S. immigration status) have an easier time getting REAL-ID (a passport from their country of citizenship) than some U.S. citizens.
> 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.
I'm sure some young guns from a techbro company would love to dive into the data lake and make a proposal. They might need to take a few reels of tape away for offsite analysis, but don't worry..
The reels of tape already exist at Apple/Alphabet/Tmobile/ATT/Verizon/Meta/Microsoft/Chase/BoA/etc, subject to secret FISA warrants. What difference does it make?
I stand corrected, at least in Pennsylvania (1). I misremembering the issues surrounding requiring Id to vote. The law that was struck down did provide a free id that would have been suitable for voting; however, that isn't required and no longer exists, and there was no mention I could find of if it would have been realid compliant.(2)
You can and should. Some TSA workers get pissy over it, which is weird. It's there to replace them. The trainers don't, its an option you have the right to.
Well good. They can stop pestering me for real id, preventing me from moving directly to the security line without having to show id, and stop trying to force me into giving up my face model everytime.
Neither does a 3D scan like an iPhone. As far as facial recognition better because it has up to date pictures. This has been solved without up to date pictures for years. My phone can - on device recognize my son from the time he was 9 to today at 25. If my phone can do it on device, do you think this is a hard problem on a server farm?
Yes it’s just as meaningless as putting a cover over your laptop camera, any bad actor that can access your camera can also access your microphone and you can get a lot more information from a microphone.
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
It’s privacy concern theatre without comprehending how good modern facial recognition is from one photo even when running locally on a modern smart phone. The TSA already knows you are on the airplane regardless.
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.
You are in good faith equating TSA face scans and body scans with vaccination?
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?
You are being “tracked” that you got on the plane regardless, even your credit card company gets your complete itinerary where you traveled from and to and can (and does) use that for advertising.
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)
Seems quite dangerous. In my country, this was the norm for local flights - usually smaller planes, 1-2hr flights. It was common that if you could not attend a meeting, a colleague would go with your ticket. Nobody cared.
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.
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
And no, you cannot convince me that searching families flying to see grandma for Christmas is a "reasonable search".
Also, the question has been largely sidestepped by the fact that travelers consent to search by voluntarily proceeding into the secure (airside) area of the airport, and there are usually--if not always--signs at the TSA screening point that say so. It’s not like you’re being involuntarily searched at the check-in desk.
You are entering government property so they have a right to search you. Just like if you enter a sporting event they have a right to search you. You are free to not use either service.
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.
I didn’t ask you what the words say; anyone can read them. I asked you why you believe, based on the historical evidence, that the Constitution isn’t supposed to be interpreted by our courts.
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.
You did not. This is the answer of someone who has lost the argument and knows it, but refuses to admit it. The door is that way; kindly let yourself out.
All three. The people. Do you know what a Constitutional Republic is? Do you realize the American government is a government of servants? That some of them have forgotten that changes nothing.
Of the people, by the people, and for the people still stands:
>Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
>Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
>But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
You are a person, not the people. I disagree with you on what the Constitution says. Luckily, The Constitution outlines how to resolve that dispute. [0]
> ... Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863
Abraham Lincoln was four score and seven years late to the founding, I'm not sure what his opinion has to do with it.
If Real ID is so good, why do we have CLEAR? Why can I not skip the line with RealID?
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.
Fun fact, I rarely have to show my ID when flying in the EU. But what I don’t understand is why so many people don’t have an ID in the US. Seems like one of the very basic service governments should provide.
I fly between various countries in western Europe a dozen times a year and have done so for a decade and every single time I've boarded a plane I have had to shown a photo ID with my name on it that matches my name on the plane ticket. Most of the time the gate agent barely looks at the ID/name, but it is required to hand it to them. I have never once just walked on a plane without showing ID with my name on it, and I have never seen anyone in line in front of me do so, ever, and I'm talking hundreds of flights at this point. It doesn't have to be a passport, I see older Spanish people showing their driver's license only all the time, but it has to have a photo and a name (to match the name on the ticket in some way) and be a state issued ID. Again, they seem very lenient with that whole name matching thing and checking the authenticity of the ID (it isn't scanned, just visually inspected), but I've never seen anyone just say 'no' and get on a plane.
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.
Plenty of people have an ID in the US, the issue is whether or not those IDs are considered valid to get past security in the airport.
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.
It's a product of the lingering sentiment of a country founded on not wanting to pay taxes, mixed with (often warrented) mistrust of the government and truely insane immigration laws all jumbled togeather.
Yeah, we would be better of with something universal and more robust then the toilet paper they print social security numbers on, but we got the system it was possible to pass through congress.
That’s completely false. You ALWAYS have to show your ID card to fly in the EU. Always.
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 once told TSA this:
"I lost my Driver's License, and the state won't issue another for a month maybe. I understand there's an extra screening pat-down."
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.
A number of years back I somehow managed to lose my driver's license between the car and the airport door. Even called the limo company to have the driver look. But <poof> apparently. Normally I have a backup ID but this was a very last minute and short trip.
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.)
TSA has been an elaborate ruse to create a recurring revenue service program called “clear” and tsa-pre. Of course they are also able to monetize the ruse itself.
It's an elaborate ruse to condition Americans to the 4th amendment not being a real thing. The PATRIOT ACT which created the TSA was written by Joe Biden after the Oklahoma City bombing and passed after being reintroduced following 9/11 to end-run around the 4th amendment.
It's a real head-scratcher that the cohort that claims government ID is unattainable for some people hasn't taken up this issue. "Real ID" isn't something that is just delivered to you. Now we're going to charge money not to have it?
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!
Democrats usually complain that ID requirements suppress voters’ rights. Your right to travel isn’t as thoroughly suppressed by this as the right to vote is. It’s not a strong excuse, but it’s not totally inconsistent either. And, at least before this change, there were still ways to go through security screening without ID. If those are not allowed any more, maybe Dems will take up the issue.
Frankly, the entire agency is unconstitutional. From the fact that they basically exist under a general warrant issued by the supreme court (although they invented a new catagory, "administrative search", which doesn't fundamentally change what it is) to the restrictions on the right to assembly requires free travel as well, although the current legal underpinnings are "creative", the 10th admendment which grants all non enumerated powers to the states, to the restrictions on bearing arms on the plane and a half dozen other parts. About the only part they might be able to stand on is commerce again, but then so much travel in the larger states remains in the state (ex dallas/houston, san fran/LA) requiring seperate security zones.
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.
Inventing categories is what the court does. The Constitution is incredibly brief, and gives zero guidance on how to clarify conflicts. It has always been full of "common sense" exceptions, like criminalizing threats (despite the unqualified "freedom of speech" language) or probable cause (police can invade your house if they know you are committing a crime right now).
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.
The constitution doesn't provide a "common sense" loophole. Much of it is written in absolutist language because that was the actual intention. The amendment process is provided to open "common sense" loopholes if everyone agrees they are common sense, not for the courts to gradually erode the language until the federal goverment is doing things the founders explicitly fought the revolutionary war over.
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.
At first glance that seems to be true, but when you look at the arguments at the time, who made them and how much of it was walked back, it just looks like the usual legislative panic, same as 911. It doesn't make the original intentions wrong, anymore than what happens when you release open source software and it takes on a life of its own under new maintainers. The failure to understand the long term reprocusion of basically ignoring the actual language of the original document puts one in a place where literally nothing matters except what you can ram through congress and get supreme court approval over during a time of panic or before the other side takes over again.
Thats not a constitutional democracy, thats just anarchy and rule by whoever can buy the most seats.
It seems to me it is more of a penalty to encourage people to get Real ID while still allowing them to fly. I would imagine most air travelers have some kind of real id, passport, actual real id DL or global entry card. Very few people cannot get real id due to name inconsistency issues, but most are just lazy. Allowing them to fly for $45 seems reasonable to me, particularly if they cause delays at security.
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.
This has to make you wonder if the entire Security Theater is for security or money. I mean, if the RealID is supposed to increase security, then how does plopping $45.00 down help security? I'm pretty sure most terrorists can afford that. There is also the possibility that the RealID is simply another way the government is using to keep tabs on us 24/7/365.
Yes, because the federal government can't assume that everyone has an ID, since they don't issue a universal ID. Any attempt to fix the fact that Americans don't have universal federal identification has met stiff resistance from a variety of angles, from privacy proponents to religious nuts who think universal identification is the mark of the beast.
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.
It's a deep-seated cultural paranoia that the federal government is out to get us. Initially, the US tried to be a confederation like the EU or Canada, but it turned out that we needed slightly more federal power than that to stay as a unified country. But the tension between "loose coalition of independent states" and "unified government that grants some powers to the states" is a pretty fundamental theme throughout US politics.
It's out to get you whether you have a credit card sized piece of plastic or not. Dying on that hill just creates so much wasted time and money for everyone.
It isn't paranoia, it's an actual thing that they have and continue to do. They regularly terrorize the people of the United States. Ask your nearest nonwhite citizen, they will tell you.
> deep-seated cultural paranoia that the federal government is out to get us.
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.
Assuming illegal immigrants should be deported as they broke the law and the government has been doing since Obama, wouldn’t having a standardized national id like every other country in the world simplify things? People only have their passport as a national id is strange, as that’s for usage in other countries.
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.
I've been noticing the same category of oddity for a while now.
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.
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.
In most of the modern world, it's impossible to go through life without a bank account at the minimum (which requires an ID), but not so in the USA, there you can live your whole life, paying with, and accepting cash, storing it in your matress.
Among the man weird corners of US national ID politics, is the set of Americans who think a national ID is an unforgivable invasion of liberty but that an ID should be required to vote.
That sort of makes sense though? It's the minimal level of government involvement required. Presumably you can't carry out a fair election without some form of gatekeeping. Whereas why exactly should ID be required to do mundane daily things including traveling long distances?
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.
A lot of people are making general statements, and I'm not sure how valid they are. For example, in my neck of the woods (Canada), I have flown without ID and without passing through security. I would be surprised if the same wasn't true in the US. What I left out: the flights weren't through an international airport and didn't connect to an international airport. Same airport, different flight (one that did connect to an international airport) and passing through security was a requirement. In that case, as well as domestic flights through international airports, ID checks were the domain of the airline.
Within the Schengen area, you don't really need an ID to get on a plane either. In fact you can go through security screening in many places without an ID or a valid ticket.
We do have smaller regional airports in the US, but those smaller airports do still have TSA-staffed security if they serve commercial flights. The TSA considered eliminating security at those smaller domestic-only airports back in 2018, but after it hit the media, they reversed course on it.
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.
There are whole catagories of people without "ID" as such, like say underage children or people unable to drive. ID's in the USA have traditionally been either drivers licenses or passports. Many states have added non-drivers license IDs for handicapped, elderly, etc, but AFAIK they aren't particularly popular since those catagories of people don't tend to need them until they suddenly find themselves in a situation needing one.
It is, but it’s difficult. I am down visiting New Zealand and 3 times I have flown domestically here and there no ID check. I buy a ticket online, check in online, and scan a barcode at the gate. Is New Zealand an exception, or do a lot of countries not require an ID for domestic flights, and the US is the exception?
EU technically doesn’t require government-issued ID to fly either. They often don’t check for ID at all, and in cases where they do, legally any card with your name and photo on it would work for this „identification“. EU generally doesn’t legally require you to carry ID - but they can and will hassle you more and more if you don’t.
Usually you go to either a police station or an embassy and receive a temporary permit that has a validity of one week, just enough to get to the place of registration and re-issue your ID.
IDs are a state-level concern in the US federal system. California IDs are issued by California. It’s like going into a Spanish government building to get your Belgian passport replaced. They will have no records of you, and nothing to do.
>It’s like going into a Spanish government building to get your Belgian passport replaced.
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's definitely just to get people to fly with a valid ID without ambushing the enormous number of people who have been living under a rock and don't realize they need a real ID. Otherwise they'll have a dozen or so people freaking out at the airport every single day for years.
Practically speaking, could I fly inside the U.S. without an ID? Just ask for the manual pat down? I assume I’ll need to show up like an extra hour early to give them time to harass me about it, but what are the chances that this works at all, vs just being turned away regardless of what’s legal?
I was pickpocketed a few years ago and was able to fly domestically without ID.
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.
You have the right to try and fly without an ID. The airlines also have the right to tell you to buzz off and get lost and the airport operator has the right to decide they don’t want you in the building and trespass you if you don’t scram.
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”.
You have an absolute "right to travel" (see the 14th amendment and other cases as recently as 1999), but you're also absolutely correct that "common carriers" can can refuse commercial service and you can be criminally trespassed from an airport, BUT TSA can not charge you a fee to attempt to fly.
Unlike other service providers, a common carrier by definition cannot refuse service to anyone willing to pay the fare in the tariff. Common carrier laws are some of the oldest consumer protection laws, enacted to protect travelers and shippers of goods against predatory and discriminatory pricing. Federal law recognizes the "public right of transit" by air, and requires boith airlines and Federal agencies to respect it.
This is only true for the "ticket purchase" not for the service itself.
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.
This is not true, in at least 2 respects: (1) a common carrier has a legal duty not just to sell a ticket but to provide transportation according to the tariff, and (2) this means an airline can't order a passenger not to board, or order them off the plane, unless they have violated some terms of the tariff. Some airlines have tried to create their own no-fly lists, but without opening up another area of discussion these have no more basis in law than the government's no-fly list, and have never (so far as I know) been reviewed by courts.
If you are flying domestically, the airline doesn’t care. They know that someone bought a ticket to get pass security and that ticket matched the ID of the person who got through security. They don’t lose money and thier is no increased safety risk.
About 75% of the time I don't get asked for ID at all when flying within Schengen Europe. I understand technically there isn't any border crossing, but they have absolutely no idea who is actually on the plane. Wild.
That's because you have the right to travel freely between Schengen countries.
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.
Interesting, the main and probably only reason I know this is a legitimate site and not some random person's blog post is because I heard about Frommers from the movie Eurotrip.
No one should be forced to give an ID for a domestic flight. It always used to be that way. Every day there is huge amount of chipping away at our freedoms.
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.
Does a small part of you not feel the urge, however, to check who people are before letting them on your plane. By which I mean, after 9/11 and all that happened there.
No, why would it? When I take the bus, subway, or train, nobody is checking IDs - at most they check if I have a valid ticket, which can be bought with cash.
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.
Let's say in theory the TSA is doing their job and verifying there is nothing dangerous on the plane, it would seem to me then anyone should be allowed to fly. I don't see what we're supposed to even be achieving beyond a warrantless harassment campaign against people the government decides it doesn't like?
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.
Citizens Council for Health Freedom has a whole page about Real ID. [0] Senator Rand Paul has a bill to repeal it. Crucially, you can still fly without a Real ID - there are 15 other forms of acceptable ID.
> As described by Clinton’s counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, this idea was conceived overnight as a way to show that the government was “doing something” in response to a plane crash that turned out to have been caused by a faulty fuel tank, not terrorism.
To be honest the worry about terrorists hijacking planes under Clinton proved to be quite prescient only a few years later.
I don't have a real ID and don't plan to get one, but I also basically never fly anymore (been over 5 years). However this is certainly further incentive for me not to fly - wonder if airlines will see a slight decline in travelers over next few years due to this.
I want to talk about Chevron deference. Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.
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.
Since this is proof that the original and stated point of supplying ID is not valid can we just dispense with the whole charade? It clearly isn't about security if a measly $45 is all it takes to circumvent it so let's just get rid of it entirely.
The emperor not only has no clothes, he's shouting that fact at us.
Fun fact: for internal flights in New Zealand you don't need (and aren't asked for) ID. There is security but pretty lightweight. No shoes, laptops, belts, liquids, scanner crap.
This is a really stupid situation. We shouldn't be obstructed from flying without ID as long as we pass the regular security checks, and those security checks shouldn't be unreasonable.
What can we do to get there? Is anybody organizing?
I've flown without ID twice. Once because I lost my ID, once to prove to a friend that it could be done. This fee will fail for the same reason that flying without ID works at all - the law is quite clear on it.
My brother did this once and if you print your boarding pass before arriving you don't have to check in (obviously this is for a domestic flight with no checked bags). The TSA will question you and swab everything in your suitcase though.
You just tell them "Don't have one". Then they (most likely a second TSA agent so you don't hold up the line) run a quick interview to try and establish who the heck you are, and if you can be trusted to be let onto a plane.
Do not have one. Asked for my name, if i had any proof of it (i had a few credit cards in my name) lots of other questions. very thorough pat down. disassembled by bag slowly. took 40 min.
Common carriers can refuse to board you for legitimate reasons. Not having ID is not one of those as far as I know. (Obviously international travel is an entirely different beast. That's neither here nor there.)
I hadn't heard about this, but this is blatantly against the explicit and implied "right to travel" that's baked into the 14th amendment and had over a 156 years of precedence since Paul vs. Virginia.
Not sure why the title was editorialized, but this is literally just one person's opinion. The title makes it sound like the legal community universally agrees, which is not true.
It’s also bad legal commentary . The TSA seems to have broad legal authority. The more vague a law is, the more authority the executive branch has , not less (assuming it’s constitutional, and our constitution is also deliberately limited)
There are two avenues for recourse: lobbying your congressman or suing the TSA . I’m guessing the ACLU / EFF and other groups haven’t yet sued because the TSA’s legal authority is broad.
As discussed in the original article, John Gilmore (co-founder of EFF) did sue. "His complaint was dismissed on the basis of TSA policies that said travelers were still allowed to fly without ID as long as they submitted to a more intrusive 'pat-down' and search. The court didn’t rule on the question of whether a law or policy requiring ID at airports would be legal, since the TSA conceded there was no such law."
It's an interesting argument. Is there a highly-credible, authoritative source? Maybe someone like the EFF or ACLU? There are lots of ideas online about the law, of varying credibility, and I'd hesitate to risk a lawsuit over Internet advice.
Expert witnesses are not reliably credible authorities. They are people with credentials hired to help win lawsuits. I'm sure the author knows more than I do, but that doesn't say much.
It's not about his testimony on this particular issue. In fact, it does not appear that he has given any. It's about his qualifications to potentially testify. Even so, in American courts (in which he has previously qualified,) the qualification process is adversarial and involves both direct and cross-examination, so if he wasn't actually qualified, the opposing party would certainly argue as much.
The reality of expert witnesses is not that they are authoritative sources outside the courtroom, but witnesses for one party. It's a job - sometimes for people who didn't find much success in their field - and they are paid by the party that calls them to testify.
Everything in a US courtroom is adversarial; every witness is cross-examined and their credibility can be questioned.
While I concur with your hesitation, my first reaction on hearing about the fee was "Didn't they say you couldn't fly without a realid? Why am I able to fly without one then?" The idea that they may not be able to bar you without one jives with how this is playing out. Another commenter in this post also mentioned flying without id, which I also thought wasn't possible.
Yep. It's important to highlight this is not about flying without ID. It's flying without the new federal ID and their attempt to coerce people into getting the federal ID.
They've been pushing it back every year because states haven't implemented it uniformly. Washington gave me a non real-ID card in 2022. IIRC the only real-ID option at the time was an Enhanced ID which can be used to cross the border from Canada and costs $100.
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.
As the other comments inform you, many states were not coerced into adopting it until very recently. In these ~dozen states the majority of people do not have the new federal ID. There are Enhanced Driver's Licenses as alternatives the to the invasive federal ID but most just have the normal state ID that work perfectly well; excepting these contrived situations the feds use to try to force people with.
I remember flying before the TSA, it was pretty great in part because you could do things like go to the gate to meet arriving family, or walk your child to the gate before they departed as an unaccompanied minor, with the expectation someone was meeting them at the gate on the other side. There has never been a single observation or piece of information that has indicated anything other than the TSA is an unconstitutional waste of money doing security theatre to support a jobs program for societal rejects. All that said, I've been enrolled in Global Entry since it started, CLEAR since it started, and Pre-Check since it started (which later was included w/ Global Entry) because I have places to be and people to see, and I need to just get on with my life.
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?
I think I must be confused, but after reading many of the replies, I can't figure this out. Is the standard American perspective that one shouldn't have to show any form of identification to go through security, get on a plane, and travel anywhere within the United States? How does anyone associate your ticket to your identity?
My American perspective is unless I'm participating in an activity that definitely requires carrying and presenting ID, I don't need to.
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.
You don't need to carry ID/license to operate a vehicle. People (including I'm sure some cops) think you do but you only have to possess the license and present it to the cops if asked. Presenting can include going home to retrieve it from your dresser drawer. The US isn't (or wasn't) a "show me your papers" country.
Can't speak for the "standard American perspective," but no, you should not have to show identification. Why should someone need to be tracked to travel? Why does a ticket need to be associated to identity?
I'm not stating that they should be. I first want to make sure this is not just a question of the "Real ID". I can think of a couple of reasons that would throw a wrench in the works:
- 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".
We do have to show ID. But the federal government said it's not enough to use a normal state driver's license or passport. You need a special "Real ID" that's somehow allegedly better. Your old driver's license that you can pay for booze with, open a bank account with, and you know, drive with, isn't proof enough of who you are to ride on a plane.
Edit: I should note that I have one. But lots of people don't, because most people never replace their driver's license card.
I think this is where my confusion lies. It seems like many people are saying no ID of any kind -- passport, "real ID", driver's license, ... -- should be provided, period. So ostensibly a 10 year-old could show up at the airport and decide to travel on their own (and if we only ID "young-looking people" then we get into a similar discussion as to why one should always ask for proof of age when buying alcohol).
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).
Passport works. You don't need real ID. Its only purpose is to deal with states where the normal driver license issuing process isn't up to whatever standards the feds dictate.
A passport is just as tedious to get as a real id. As far as I'm aware, there's no compelling security benefit that the government has articulated about how standardizing licenses improves security.
I don’t think a no-fly list should exist. Either a person has committed a crime and should be prosecuted, or not. It doesn’t make sense to me to say, you’re too dangerous to be allowed on a plane but not dangerous enough to put in jail.
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.
It's hilarious how transparent a money grab this entire thing is.
"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.
> So it was never about security at all then, was it?
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.
> The TSA was NEVER about security. It was designed as a jobs program and make it look like we were doing something for security.
To a great extent, it is security, even if it's mostly security theater, in the sense that it is security theater that people want.
A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it. I've had and overheard multiple conversations at the airport where somebody felt uncomfortable boarding a plane because they saw the screening agent asleep at the desk. Pro-tip, trying to explain security theater to the concerned passenger is not the right solution at this point ;-)
Even Bruce Schneier, who coined the term "security theater" has moderated his stance to acknowledge that it can satisfy a real psychological need, even if it's irrational.
We may be more cynical and look upon such things with disdain, but most people want the illusion of safety, even if deep down they know it's just an illusion.
> 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.
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.
> I’d hazard that this may be true now, but this feeling was created by the same “security measures” we’re discussing.
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...
Er, I don't get it. I do the same thing at every airport in the US: walk off the plane and straight into a taxi.
I think they're talking about international travel and not having to go through border control within the Schengen space even though you're traveling to different countries.
Yes, but border control isn't security. I don't go through security when I arrive in the US either. (I do have global entry but that just means I usually go through immigration faster.) If I have a connecting flight after arriving in the US I do sometimes have to go through security again with my carryon but that's a function of airport layout.
Looks like even OP was confused about it so I guess it wasn't something to be made sense of.
Just to be clear: I understand the difference. What I couldn’t do was explain to someone who has no concept that customs are not a security check. Or that you don’t need customs for (effectively) internal flights. I suspect part of this is that in the UK, we don’t get many internal flights (beyond connections), so people don’t have an experience of just walking off a plane and out of the airport.
Yes, I meant you were confused about the nature of the comment/question (like you mentioned in a sibling response somewhere). :)
I flew once from Iraq to Sweden (in a private capacity). There was zero controls other than stamping the passport, passport control but no customs inspection. No check of bags and no question of what I might have been doing in Iraq or why I would go from there to Sweden. It was shocking. Just welcome to sweden and off to the street.
Hopefully they haven't changed. It's nice to see a place still left without the paranoia.
Border entry at airports is concerned with a) smuggling and b) immigration control. Passport control may have been all you saw but there was almost certainly heavy profiling and background checking going on behind the scenes. If you had matched a more suspicious pattern than "high-power passport without suspicious history flying an unusual route", you likely would have faced more scrutiny.
I think the point is that some people expect security even where it would be pointless.
Basically this. She was confusing Customs with Security, I think.
Neither did I, thus why I didn’t really know how to respond.
> If you start imposing laws or other practices every time a group of people feel “uncomfortable”, the world will quickly grind to a halt.
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 ...
This is it. It’s amazing how accepting people of this reality and how resigned they are about it.
Yeah, those people are welcome to drive if it makes them feel safer. Meanwhile lets focus on actually making sure planes are safe.
The problem with allowing "feels unsafe" to drive policy is that you get this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46866201 ; a lot of Americans (and other nationalities) get that "feels unsafe" feeling when they see a visible minority. Or a Muslim. Or someone who isn't a Muslim but (like a Sikh!) is from the same hemisphere as the Middle East.
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.
Oh for sure, as a non-white, bearded person I've had more than my fair share of "random" screenings!
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?
Nah I disagree. A charter plane with 200 Dutch tourists is lower risk than a flight coming out of Bolivia.
You can do the wokeness and treat everyone the same but that's not how policing works.
The moment you encode your biases in policy, you create vulnerabilities.
What I’m hearing is that if I want to get something past your security policy, I need to route it through the Netherlands, possibly via a travel agency.
You don't have to profile people to police, and that's very poor policing. You need to assess actual risk, not fake proxy risk like the color of people's skin.
The problem with profiling is that it sucks both ways. People who are regular degular get fucked for the sake of fake policing, and then real threats are more likely to slip through.
> Nah I disagree. A charter plane with 200 Dutch tourists is lower risk than a flight coming out of Bolivia.
What a weird and random thing to say. There's literally no data that can support for or against and neither have a history of terrorism.
Ironically KLM ('dutch') has had more terrorism per flight than any Bolivian airline. Both minimal (Bolivia 1954, KLM 1973,1994). There's literally no other piece of data between these countries that I could find to support this "lower risk".
Further, the travel advisory for Denmark and Netherlands cite terror risk while Bolivia cites civil unrest.
While being woke is not helpful, neither is 'winging it' based on 'what feels white, ahem, right'. At least do a Google search.
How about a flight coming out of Bolivia with 200 Dutch tourists on board? Is it more or less risky than a flight coming out of the USA with 200 Donald Trumps on board? Is there a list?
It is mostly security, but not to residents of the country. Those can enforce their rights. In my country, I can argue with airport security, and win. Foreigners can’t, so they follow whatever rules. A few times when landing in the US, security was extremely rude, I think just looking for an excuse (things like throwing your laptop a few feet away, while staring at you, etc). You take it bc you’re not home, and the cost of ruining your vacation is not worth it.
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.
Reasonable hypothesis but not correct in the US.
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.
It's not about being recognized, it's about when you are asked to be patted down, having the courage to lie "I can't raise my arms over my head", knowing the risk of being caught is at worst not making this flight. For a foreigner it might be getting banned permanently from the country. Same concept as self censorship. You do what you're told and then you go enjoy your vacation.
Understood and reasonable but one correction:
> 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.
I don't think I've ever made it through the physical screening without betraying my accent at some point. Sure you can work your way out of an accent, but it's not easy, and requires years of practice, and probably the most reliable (but fuzzy) low-scrutiny indicator of someone who "aint from around here" in a multicultural society where looks are ~useless for such determinations.
I tried to opt out in the UK last time I was there a few years ago. The agent looked at me, confused, and said "so... you don't want to get on the plane?". She told me the the UK didn't allow opt-outs.
This was the only time I've gone through the machine since they were introduced.
Note that for the most part, air travel into/out of the UK is international, so the constraints are stricter.
> The agent looked at me, confused, and said "so... you don't want to get on the plane?"
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!
I've felt more uncomfortable with the UK Border Force than US CBP. It's been a few years since I've been to the UK, but there was usually more tension for Non-European foreigners at the Airport than non-Americans at the US airports.
Airport security in India is particularly infuriating on this point. Everything gets scanned and fed through over and over again, and everyone gets wanded and patted down over and over again, with maximum ‘fuck you’ to any passenger that dares to question the sanity of restarting your entire screening - because you left your belt on.
Meanwhile, I haven’t even had a western airports metal detector even fire on the same belt in years.
Most western countries also haven't had multiple attempted [0][1][2] and committed [3][4] mass casualty terror attacks nor a direct conventional conflict that for all intents and purposes was a war [5] in the past 2 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...
> And airport security in Israel makes Indian airport security feel like a breeze
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!)
India's airport "security" is one of the best examples of underemployment and security "theatre".
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?
We people are extremely poor judges of our own emotions, particularly in hypotheticals.
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.
Let's not mix "emotions" with "think". If I am afraid (emotion) about something happening, I will be afraid where the maximum damage can be done - in the queue before the security check (think). Most airports optimized that to reduce the queues, but there are still at least tens of people in a very narrow space.
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".
> 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.
What about the real psychological need of not wanting to be surveilled that also quite a lot of people have?
Personally I agree with that sentiment. But unfortunately, as the success of Facebook and Google have shown, most people really don't care about their privacy.
> But unfortunately, as the success of Facebook and Google have shown, most people really don't care about their privacy.
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 you offer the public FDA-inspected cinnamon for a 20% premium over not-inspected-and-may-contain-dangerous-levels-of-lead cinnamon, a lot of people will pay the premium. But a large percentage of people will opt for the cheaper cinnamon.
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.
> What we need is an iPhone app that can detect guns, explosives, anthrax, covid, Canadians, and any other airplane hazard.
No doubt! Then strap it to our arms and call it a Pip Boy.
https://thedirect.com/article/fallout-season-2-us-canada
I would just let the airlines pick if they want TSA screening or not. Customers could buy flights with whatever security level they want.
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...
Security is a classic example of a public good where this doesn't work well. The cheapest ways to secure an airport (sharing queues, staff, protocols, machines, training, threat models) are going to also benefit those who opt out, creating a tragedy of the commons.
>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.
White people and passenger planes tend to get along well. They invent them.
Effectiveness and theatricality aside, that wouldn’t work: the risk that the TSA ostensibly controls for is primarily that of planes being used as weapons against non-passengers, and only secondarily passenger security/hijacking.
If it's about satisfying a psychological need, then it should be compared as such to satisfying other psychological needs. Like, say, not getting groped by strangers.
> A large portion, maybe even the majority, of travelers simply won't feel safe without it.
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.
The situation re: psychological safety becomes very apparent when you mention to foreigners how often guns accidentally make it through TSA in peoples bags - and get discovered on screening on the return flight.
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.
Here we are specifically discussing the gold star on a USA driver license. When there is already the whole TSA kwikset fiasco in place. The gold star indicates that a person provided some pieces of paper that may be fabricated to a very busy DMV clerk. This is somehow meant to prove they would never do anything malicious.
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.
> no risk in submitting false documents
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.
So there are two kind of security, one is preventing innocents who mistakenly brings things like gun or flammable liquid like gasoline. The other is preventing people who actually want to do harm like terrorism. There is no doubt TSA is effective for first group. However the evidence against second group is kind of murky as no country has ever caught anyone in the second group till now.
I think it's human nature to point at something you don't like and if it isn't 100% perfect then point to it and say it's flawed and must be taken down.
Repeated examples on HN
- TSA effectiveness
- AI Writing code free bug
- Self driving cars get into accidents
You are missing an important element. You can decide for yourself whether AI-produced code is worth the price. You don't get to decide whether the TSA is effective enough to pay for it.
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.
- TSA fails its own Red Team exercises 95% of the time.
- 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.
Security Theater Blanket
I've been applying this principle of behavior to... ahem... current events. I feel like this helps contextualize the behavior of the majority during the current economic and political turmoil. People can't help but pretend this wasn't coming for years, and they certainly can't admit to having a part in it.
Taxpayers haven’t agreed to fund theater they agreed to fund safer travel. The failed audits of TSA are totally unacceptable
The purpose of the system is what it does.
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.
Taxpayers don't universally agree it's ONLY theater, HN is biased echo chamber just like any other group.
Yeah security people (computer or otherwise), are mostly crypto fascists with hardons for humiliating people and telling them what to do.
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.
A growing part of me doesn't care, and doesn't want to coddle fascist mental illness.
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.
What ethnicity are you? I went through an airport -- and nobody else got screened except me. What was special about me? I was the only non-white person in the airport. Upon complaining, this was the response:
> 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 used to have a Sikh manager who wore a turban. Whenever we traveled together, he would get "randomly" stopped. While they were patting him down, he would inevitably chuckle and say something like "So what are the odds of being 'randomly' selected 27 times in a row?"
I don't know the specifics of the process for selection, but I can confidently say that the process is bigoted.
Same thing used to happen to me when I had dreadlocks. Made the same joke too. "what are the odds I'd get randomly selected 100% of the time I go through a checkpoint..."
Besides being racist this is kind of dumb. If you’re going to bring down the plane you’re defo not going to look like someone who gets randomly selected 100% of the time. Even the 9/11 terrorists knew this and shaved their beard instead of looking like the fundamentalists scumbags they were.
Just because it’s dumb doesn’t mean people won’t do it.
I mean TSA, but it also applies to other groups too.
Rastafarian hijackers are rampant.
In proper English usage it would only be a bigoted
check if it was unreasonable to suspect a Sikh of carrying a Kirpan.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.
As a white guy who was caught accidentally carrying a large knife once through security, at the bottom of a carry-on backpack I'd had since high school, I don't think it's in any way essential to use racial or ethnic markers to figure out whether someone is taking something dangerous onto a plane. I didn't even know I was trying to bring a knife onto a plane at a regional airport. There's no reason to think that Sikhs are explicitly going out of their way to hide something.
Interesting that none of these comments seem to be questioning why we can’t just carry a small pocketknife on the plane. We used to be able to before 9/11. The 9/11 hijackings only worked because the policy was comply, land, and let the negotiators do their work. Suicide attacks using commercial airlines just wasn’t a thing. We now have armored locking cockpit doors and no airplane would give up control to hijackers anymore. United Flight 93 was already taken over and heard about the World Trade Center and they revolted.
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”.
it's still allowed across the EU (Mostly all of it)- up to 6cm blades are permitted in the cabin luggage.
Welcome to the club. I inadvertently traveled with not one, but two large box cutters in my carryon satchel for at least 20 flights before I discovered them while searching for some swag. I put them in there for a booth setup in Vegas years prior. Sent a completely calm, even sympathetic report to the powers that be, got put on the DNF list for my troubles.
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.
> Sent a completely calm, even sympathetic report to the powers that be, got put on the DNF list for my troubles.
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.
Yeah, if I had a "Crap, what was that doing in there?" I'd be very quiet about it.
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.
Some of us genuinely believe all that "cops are there to help you, so try to be helpful to cops" stuff we were raised on. Right up until the point when you actually try to do it and find out how things really work...
You sent a report saying you were not searched for 20 times and now you are searched all the time? Has it been over 20 times that you have been searched?
So here's me at Burbank:
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.
A Sikh is far more likely to be carrying a little sword than the average population.
And far less likely to stab someone than the general population.
It's not a great analogy, but the same applies to registered concealed carry gun owners. They're not the people who shoot people.
Isn’t that what the scanners are for? To find large metallic objects? Why do you need additional “random” screenings behind that? Or are you saying the scanners don’t work to find even obvious weapons? If so, we should get rid of the scanners.
To address all the questions you addressed to me.
> 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 used to work with a Kevin and a Mohammed.
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.
A person can get mistakenly (or not) flagged for special screening and get it over and over again - it happened to me many years ago.
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.
Not defending the practice but the Mohammed thing has a possible origin that isn't directly racist. The common names among Muslims and their propensity to appear on various watch lists lead to a lot of false alarms on those with those names.
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 hope you extend this understanding to other patterns people recognize and act upon. :)
I'm brown, very brown. A Native American, in fact.
Same. Every border crossing. Every flight. Every interaction with police. I always get checked. I always get flagged. I always have by bags opened and my car searched coming back from Canada with officers holding large powerful machine guns and rifles in case I twitch to hard.
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 am a white male and have TSA pre-check and after walking through the metal detector, maybe one out of several times I get randomly selected for the body scanner. I've never gotten the dreaded SSSS though. I've very rarely traveled alone not on a work trip and never alone on a one way ticket so maybe that helps.
I get it not infrequently when travelling from europe. It's annoying that they pretend that "oh this is random" .. I'm even going up to the airport employees at hte gate and telling them "I'm told I'm here to make new friends today"
White male who always flies alone and on one-ways here, never gotten SSSS.
Snowden leaked the criteria of when you get SSSS. It’s about 15 things that can trigger it. For example, flying business class with your family.
It's screwed up that skin color is a marker that would lead an ignorant provincial quasi-cop to assume someone is of a particular ethnicity, and even more so that that ethnicity would lead them to believe an individual adheres to a belief system that might lead them to blow up an aircraft. Very poor set of assumptions and flawed tooling, to say the least.
I would never get randomly selected despite being brown. Then I grew out my beard. Now random selection loves to pick me.
I once found myself in the "random extra screening" waiting room in LHR before boarding an El Al flight to Tel Aviv, everyone else in the room was Muslim. Random indeed...
I had like a +7 random screening hit streak once. Old and comfortable and that melts away as you become the system.
When all you see is color, everything different is racism.
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?
Many ICE agents are Latino but it doesn't stop them racially profiling other Latinos.
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.
Generic WASP checking in. I flew regularly for several years until covid and I'd get screened all the time too (about 50% of the time).
Are you seriously pretending that state-sponsored racism is not a thing? In today’s environment?
This just in, white person thinks racism isn't real. "Well, I've never experienced it", he says.
More at 11.
I was so confused last time I traveled as I watched this brown skinned family getting shaken down for ID by TSA and they literally just waived me past and said didn't need ID. Mind you I've never not been asked to show ID to TSA before this.
Curious about the downvotes here, it's 100% relevant to the conversation and is personal experience. I imagine it's tone policing to ensure we don't criticize the techo-facist edgelord take over?
Today was the second time in a year I went into one and my crotch got flagged because of my pants zipper. nothing in my pockets. no belt. nothing hidden. etc.
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?
This podcast episode might be of interest. https://www.searchengine.show/a-perfectly-average-anomaly/
Derek Smalls?
Almost always my back sweat from wearing a backpack shows up on the body scanner. Then a TSA agent has to put their gloved hand on my sweaty back. What a shit job lol.
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.
Are you sure it was the zipper?
it's a guess from looking at the screen where the red square is placed right around that zone.
/r/bigdickproblems
It's hard to put into words, but you're eroding the social contract through your actions. People with conditions get accused of faking it all the time, and it sounds like you're actually faking it.
If he was doing that to get faster treatment at a hospital or even just a restaurant or something then I'd agree. But by doing it to get faster treatment at the TSA check he's literally doing everyone else a favour.
The argument is that if tricks like this were to become widespread, they may start requiring certified medical documentation (or other hurdles) for said faster treatment, making life even more annoying for people with genuine issues.
In that case would actually increase security, right? Ans with genuine medical issues it should be no problem to get the necessary documentation. Either way, the consumers win.
If they opted for a pat down for 6 years, then faster treatment clearly wasn’t the goal. Metal detector + swabbing is not faster than the scanner either.
Depends heavily on where you fly from. From the original comment it clearly seems that it does make it faster.
I’m genuinely confused by this take. Admittedly my knowledge of exactly how the TSA operates is quite shallow, but don’t they xray your bags and scan for weapons on your body?
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?
Nice trick. I always opted out of the scanners, dozens of times, and just got used to bantering with guys while they were patting my balls.
I did that for a long time. My favorite part is when they say "Do you have any sore or sensitive areas?"
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."
hahah. I never really comprehended what "I'm going to slide my hand up until I meet resistance" meant. I guess it depends which way the camel's nose is facing, what kinda resistance they're gonna get.
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...
oh my GOD I'm wheezing here :D
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.
Hate to say it, but I finally just sold my soul and got Global Entry, and no one's even tried to touch my balls since hah
> When they wave me to the scanner, I say "I can't raise my arms over my head."
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).
Yep. It's asking for FAFO with civil $$ or even criminal penalties.
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.
Who said I'm lying?
It seemed implied by:
> 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.
Don't take the bait.
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.
Fair! I was going to go back and edit, but my comment was more for other people who read your comment thinking it was a good idea for them to do (assuming they can raise their hands over their heads).
Since the TSA cannot force you to prove it - after all, they're not medical personnel to evaluate it and not willing to risk your injury - whether someone lies becomes irrelevant.
If they decide to follow up to make an example of you, they can easily record a video of you until you raise your arms over your head somewhere later in the airport or on the flight. You won’t have a good time proving your case.
Just because you can raise your hands over your head doesn't mean it isn't painful.
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.
"i can't raise my arms over my head" doesn't contain the word "medically". could be religious reasons, or simply personal superstition.
Federal judges just love this kind of language lawyering.
it's legal to say "I can't raise my arms over my head". it is then prohibited to ask people about disabilities, should somebody think to inquire. I was not saying "tell this to a judge", i was telling HN that yall were making assuumptions. (assuumptions makes ass-of-you-and-you)
They are only making bad assumptions if they said this.
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.
And it’s been confirmed by red teams sneaking weapons through checkpoints that it’s not even doing the basic job. Lots of hassle and expense for little to no gain in security.
So... You're lying about having a health condition in a loud and obnoxious way? Not sure what the point is.
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.
1) its okay to the lie to the TSA and troll them. the TSA is just low skilled jobs program.
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.
You sound insufferable. Why do they need to be a moron? As you state, designed as a jobs program. So, these workers are low paying government employees who likely have trouble attaining a job or maintaining high job security. You likely live a far more privileged life than these workers. You think they want to do this job? And you call them a moron for simply attempting to do their job?
Well, their job is literally to harass people, and they knew that getting hired.
This is brilliant. I continue to opt out and get the pat down every single time. Which is annoying because they deliberately make it slow and anxiety inducing with your bags are out of sight for quite a while.
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.
I did this about a dozen times until I had too many TSA agents become extremely shitty and hostile towards me. The last two times they were making threats as I was walking away that they were going to "get me". I decided my protest opt out excuse wasn't worth dealing with attitude. They usually also made me stand there and wait sort of blocking everyone for 5-10 minutes until they even called someone over
Lots of society is like this. For example, red lights. I run them all the time and nothing happens. You just have to pay attention. It's why the police won't ticket you in SF. It doesn't matter. If anyone else complains you just yell "Am I being detained" a few times and then hit the accelerator. Teslas are fast. They can't catch you.
Another pro tip is to not pay at restaurants. If you can leave the restaurant fast enough before they give you the bill, they must have forgotten to charge you and sucks for them! The trick is not to bring bags so you can fake a trip to the toilet!
if you're not joking, actions like these are why we can't have nice things in society, it's cancerous behavior and just because you can, doesn't mean you should.
I think the two comments above yours are poking fun at the guy who is committing a felony by lying to federal agents. They're just making it obvious what he's doing is really shitty, anti-social behavior.
You are grossly misinformed and making an assumption.
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.
Lying to TSA and other government representatives is patriotic
Exactly. It gets you your freedom back, enables you to what you need to, and undercuts the illegitimate governments authority - all in one!
A major win for the people.
This is a scam that the GOP has convinced many of, that taking from the government commons is the right thing to do. But the GOP is the embodiment of a low trust society. I'd rather live in a high trust society.
> This is a scam that the GOP has convinced many of, that taking from the government commons is the right thing to do.
You should look around carefully and see who is actively defending government fraud right now.
If you're honest, you may be shocked.
Please make your point without lurking in the shadows.
I'd also rather live in a high trust society, but that's impossible with the government that we have (and it's not just Trump, although he has certainly turned our slow creep towards authoritarianism into a speedrun).
"Obeying the law, no matter how pointless, wasteful, or destructive, is a virtue."
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?
> 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.
So "Just don't be gay/smoke weed, it's not legal, if you don't like it there's a process to get that changed" is the kind of viewpoint that's compatible with your ideology then?
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.
> So "Just don't be gay/smoke weed, it's not legal, if you don't like it there's a process to get that changed" is the kind of viewpoint that's compatible with your ideology then?
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.
> Law in a democracy ALWAYS lags public sentiment because without sentiment to pander to no politician will lift a finger
Not always, just the last few decades.
Obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1431/
What if the police department has Teslas?
Quite a modest proposal.
This is genius, thank you for sharing. I don't fly often, mostly because it became from glamorous to brutal experience.
The Republicans say you should dress up better, then it’s glamorous.
Make sure you bring a change of workout clothes too for the exercise room between flights.
Holy shit that's genius, but I do worry about the minor degradation of respect for actual disabled folks if it becomes 'weaponized' in a widespread way
Serious question: why?
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.
I should not need to show an anonymous TSA agent my genitals, even if they are in black and white on some monitor theyre viewing in some back room, to get on a plane.
I'd agree with this, but TSA scanners do not show anatomical details.
> I should not need to show an anonymous TSA agent my genitals
Unless you want to!
At least currently the images are never seen by a person and are deleted after ATR.
Sure thing, and my Facebook account was hard deleted when I asked them to.
Are you implying that Mark Zuckerberg is a liar, sir?
You'll need to add a /s, else most here won't realize you're being sarcastic.
You are, right?
"Fool me twice...can't get fooled again"
I could ask the same serious question, why should I have to? There is zero reason to suspect me of being a suicidal maniac. Should we have such scanners to walk into a busy store or bus or subway system? Why don't private pilots and passengers have such screenings?
Tangential: Here in India we have security guards with hand-held metal detectors in malls, railway stations, and urban transit rails (metro) stations.
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.
I don't think anyone in the US really cares about metal detectors, humans don't naturally contain metal and it is done completely hands off with no extra visual or biometric information or saved data. Plenty of people in this thread who opted out of other security measures still walked through a metal detector without any special note. Court houses and police stations have often have metal detectors that even a Senator or President would have to walk through. The same cannot be said of direct imaging of your body though or facial recognition or anything. If you wouldn't put your children through the process to go into school each day then it seems completely bonkers to require it for any form of mass transit.
It used to be normal in the U.S. to walk people to the gate until 9/11.
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).
not letting outside people at the luggage area seems fine to me, if anyone could enter there the number of stolen baggage would skyrocket.
Pre 9/11 you could go through (useless) security without a ticket but longer ago there wasn't even security. And in some places the "gate" was...a gate. In a fence. So being at the gate meant walking from the street up to the fence. Good times.
You can walk someone to the gate, you just have to have a ticket.
Post 9/11 you could get a waiver from the ticket counter to escort someone thru security all the way to the gate. Dunno if that's a thing anymore, but I had them print out a paper and showed it at security several times in the mid 2000s.
A gate pass is a thing to pick up or drop off people who will be flying as unaccompanied minors. I don’t what other circumstances allow their issue, but when I did it a couple years ago, everyone seemed to know the process, so it’s not that rare.
There are legit health reasons to opt out of the scanner. I know because I have one of those conditions and have never been through the scanner.
That's fine, but you don't need a health condition, legit or otherwise, to opt out. It's enough to say "I would like to opt out."
Millimeter wave scanners have a health exemption? Like because it would always detect something on your body?
What is an example of such a condition?
Pacemaker, pregnancy, probably others.
Studies have all come out clean on pacemakers and mmWave. No detectable interference in the hardware or on an EKG while in a mmWave scanner.
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).
Have they done thorough, decades-long studies on millimeter-wave machines to ensure they have absolutely no long-term adverse health effects?
Mass hysteria.
Then why do they routinely send kids through the (non-invasive) metal detectors, while adults get sent through the millimeter-wave scanners?
I think it’s a mistake to assume these policy decisions all have peer-reviewed science behind them.
To me it's just a vote against the profiteers who make those machines.
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?!
Perhaps I haven't gotten a representative sample, but in 100% of the content I've seen from self-described "first amendment auditors", they're acting unpleasant and suspicious for absolutely no reason other than provoking a reaction. To me this seems like antisocial behavior that degrades rather than supports First Amendment protections. I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.
> I consider myself a pretty strong First Amendment supporter, but if I routinely found strange men filming me as I walked down the street, I would support basically any legal change required to make them stop.
It strikes me that the first clause of this sentence and the last one are unambiguously contradictory.
I don't think so? The behavior of these auditors is not speech in any meaningful sense; they're not trying to communicate any message, they're just trying to make people around them uncomfortable. It's just hard to draw a clear line that would prohibit their behavior without chilling lawful speech.
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.
> The behavior of these auditors is not speech in any meaningful sense;
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.
No, it's not press either. First Amendment auditors do things like this: https://www.independent.com/2025/07/09/first-amendment-audit...
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.
First Amendment auditors have usually been attention seeking individuals making click bait YouTube videos. It's been interesting seeing the transformation from that to what we're seeing with people monitoring ICE.
To be honest, I watch very little of that content, so I had no idea. If they're unkind, then obviously that sucks.
But walking around with cameras maintaining the unequivocal right to record what happens in the commons seems like a very important and thankless task.
I, too, dislike walking far. Here’s how I faked my way into a handicap parking tag.
> I, too, dislike walking far. Here’s how I faked my way into a handicap parking tag.
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.
That’s fine and it is of course security theater / jobs program. I was put off by the feigning of disability to avoid a scanner and/or some inconvenience. This kind of behavior is okay, even great, but please come up with a more tasteful way. Otherwise I hope it’s a parody.
There may be no more tasteful way, this is likely the only way.
It may be many things, but I very much doubt the motivation is a money grab. A few people paying $45 isn't lining the pockets of some government official, or plugging a hole in any possible budget.
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.
There is no legal requirement to show id or answer any questions to establish identification before flying. In other words there is no extra work required by law which the fee would cover.
The TSA is literally doing all this extra work though, whether or not you think it's required by law. They're not just pocketing the $45 and then blindly waving you ahead.
Let's be more precise. The TSA has created extra work for themselves, and are charging us for it, whether it's legally required or not (because they pretend that it is).
Sure. But it's not "pretend". It's genuine regulatory policy they've created because they believe it's necessary for security, and this has been a decades-long project. The article is arguing they don't ultimately have the legal authority to make that regulatory policy. Maybe that'll go to court and be tested, maybe they'll win and maybe they'll lose. If they lose, maybe Congress will pass explicit legislative authorization the next day, and maybe that'll be brought to court, and the Supreme Court will have to decide if it violates the 14th amendment or not. But it's not "fake work", it's actually doing a thing.
No, it's not "regulatory policy". It's been done entirely with some combination of secret "Security Directives" and "rulemaking by press release". As the article and the linked references explain, the TSA never issued any regulations, published any of the required notices, or obtained any of the approvals that would have been required even if Congress had passed an (unconstitutional) authorizing statute (which it didn't).
No. Policy or regulation would have a basis in law. This administration has aptly demonstrated their contempt for the law. Nobody gives a shit about some grunt federal employee getting extra work.
This is just a way to compel compliance and to push the agenda for ID with higher documentary requirements, ultimately to deny the vote.
I mean I could hire someone to continuously dig and refill the a hole in the ground. That would certainly be them doing a thing, but it would also definitely be fake work. There's been plenty of rhetoric thrown around but no real evidence has been produced that suggests the TSA isn't engaging in a bit of circular digging at the taxpayer's expense with this.
Ah, digging holes and refilling them - that'd be literally the NREGA program in India
As I mentioned[0] a few months ago after the TSA announced the $45 "fee":
And now the birds are coming home to roost. No real surprise there, IMHO.[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46128346
It's security theatre, someone has to pay the performers
Flying without ID just gets you the full patdown treatment. It’s not like they’re tracking down people to vouch for you.
I don't know what you mean by "full patdown treatment", but they're absolutely tracking down your information in databases and interviewing you about it. See replies to:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46864182
It's absolutely not just enhanced physical screening.
It's not just a patdown. They take you to a phone booth that has a direct line to some portion of the FBI IIRC, and they ask you a bunch of questions to confirm your identity. At least this is what happened to me about ten years ago when I lost my wallet in a different state and needed to fly home.
... and the law in most states requires only that you give your name and possibly your DOB to the authorities upon detainment. So as a purely academic exercise, what can they even do if you refuse to answer beyond that? Obviously in practice they will fuck with you or just straight up violate the constitution, but theoretically I'm unsure how they can continue to seize you after that.
...they don't let you fly.
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.
... if you aren't detained you are free to go. And if you are free to go, you are free to stay, unless the property owner has trespassed you. TSA doesn't own the airport, at least in my state. So how can they trespass you from the airport or otherwise continue to detain you from moving forward?
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.
You are free to leave. You aren't free to go wherever you want. You aren't free to go into the employee areas, or out onto the runway. If you don't clear security, you aren't allowed in the secure portion of the airport. Not allowing entry into an area is not "detaining you from moving forward".
If the government is requiring the property owner to submit to TSA, that's a public act and not a private one, which means it is bound by the bill of rights and most importantly the 4th 5th and maybe even 6th amendment. The government cannot punish you for exercising your rights by refusing you to move forward into the private place you could otherwise lawfully go. If you can't go to the employee area, that's because certain individuals are trespassed from going there from the private owner, not because the government is forcing it. If you can't go to the boarding area, because of the TSA by public act strong arming the property owner, that is not an act of the private owner, and if it's done because you refuse to answer questions it is a violation of your rights.
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.
What are you talking about?
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.
Constitutional right of access, which as you say doesn't exist, isn't the same as allowing access but conditioning it upon you relinquishing your bill of rights.
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 TSA is violating the law, and the constitution, and making it up as they go.Just wait until you find out how the feds enacted the 55mph speed limit or are using the threat of revoking Medicare funding for hospitals that perform certain medical procedures that the feds would like to have not happen...
Presumably the airport or airline has agreed to (or would agree if asked to) have TSA decide whether you are “free to go that way, towards the airplanes”.
You are already free to go that other way (towards the street), but not necessarily free to go the way you want.
I don't think it's a matter of whether or not you are free to go. It's a matter of whether they let you on the plane.
It's just federal law.
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.
I think the question here is, which laws?
LMGTFY: Aviation and Transportation Security Act
https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/PLAW-107publ71/html/PLAW...
The confusion in this thread shows me that even here, no one understands even the question, let alone the answer.
As far as I can tell, a person is free to go if they refuse screening: They won't be getting on a flight, but they can just leave. There's no detainment involved in this process.
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?
at least, hold or delay you long enough to make you miss your flight.
Like someone who would deliberately show up to work in a speedo because "show me where in the employee handbook it says I must wear pants"
A better analogy would be a legally protected right to show up to work dressed in street clothes, your boss imposes an illegal requirement to wear a specific uniform, and then attempts to charge you if you show up without one.
Is this the case, I didn't see it in the article.
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
$45 x millions of people (some multiple times) = an incredibly consequential amount of money
It's not millions of people, most people get Real ID. In the context of airport security budgets, it's not that much. And it's used for hiring the additional staff required and putting together the identity verification systems they use.
> It's not millions of people, most people get Real ID
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
What states do you have to pay for your Real ID every time? Yes, you have to pay to renew your license or photo ID, but the Real ID fee in my state (PA) is one-time. Renewal costs are the same whether it's a Real ID or not.
WA state it is an extra $56 every time you renew for Real ID
California would be one, because they issue Real IDs to non-citizens that are tied to their documentation, which needs to be reviewed each time.
to add, fee for Real ID marker on Limited Term license covers 5 years, so if one gets lets say a license for 2 years (& had to pay for 5 years), the next renewals/updates within those 5 years are free.
As of the imposition of start of this new fee/fine, about 200,000 people a day fly without ID or without REAL-ID: https://papersplease.org/wp/2025/05/28/200000-people-a-day-f... - At $45 a pop, that would bring in >$3B a year. "A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money."
That's a really disappointing source. The headline is '200,000 people a day fly without REAL-ID', which starts out quite interesting.
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 most recent press release from the TSA claims that it's now 6% of passengers not showing ID or not showing REAL ID: https://www.tsa.gov/news/press/releases/2025/12/01/tsa-intro... So down only slightly since May 2025 when they started "enforcing" a "requirement" to show REAL-ID.
So, 1 to 2 billion dollars, depending on how many round trips are above or below 10 days. You're right, I thought this was real money, like 3 billion. But 1 to 2 billion? You find that between the couch cushions every week. I'm so glad people like you are out there debunking these ridiculous claims.
The number you came up with is still in the same order of magnitude of the source...
This is such an odd point that some of you are arguing. You’re nitpicking numbers (some of you incorrectly) and sidestepping the main issue entirely. None of you are providing sources, you’re just handwaving away saying “this will barely impact anybody” basically. It’s such an odd argument and I don’t get the point.
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.
“Most” people can have it and there’d still be millions (tens of millions, even over 100mill) of people who don’t. Multiple states don’t even require it. That guarantees several million people right there.
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.
America only has 340 million people to begin with. Then, half the population doesn't even fly in a given year. Those that do are mostly aware of the RealID requirement and either got it whenever they last renewed their driver's license, or renewed early because their DMV kept mailing them warnings about needing to do so if they wanted to fly. Yes, most people who fly either have it, or are getting it before their next flight. Part of the $45 fee is also to incentivize people to get the RealID, as that will obviously be cheaper for them over the long run.
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.
There’s quite a bit of evidence to say there are still millions without one, especially depending on the state, this article is from 9 months ago:
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 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 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.
I thought that too, having seen the requirements, but it turns out it does not really do anything (at least as far as I can tell):
https://reason.com/2025/12/31/dhs-says-real-id-which-dhs-cer...
Allow me to remind you of what you said:
> 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.
I mean, that's one agency making a highly contested claim for obvious controversial political reasons.
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.
You keep saying “most” which I agreed with for starters and still leaves a ton of people.
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/
Assuming 100M "classic" ID checks (being generous): congrats, you just paid for two days of running the military!
So trump can use this money to invade and finish taking over Greenland!
Right after he finishes the wall Mexico is paying for I’m sure
5% of TSA’s annual budget ain’t nothing to scoff at.
But everyone would have to take advantage of that benefit not having ID have with themselves.
The roughly 7.6 million CLEAR members paying $209/yr grosses them north of $1 billion/year. It's not hard to see why TSA wants to get in on it.
CLEAR members are going out of their way to register their info in a biometric identification system. I don't think the people avoiding REAL IDs are the same demographic.
Laziness comes in many forms
> "Ok then, give us $45 and you can go through."
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.
Fully agreed with you. Amazing how blatant misinformation gets to the top here.
It's not a money grab, it's a tactic to encourage compliance. This isn't evidence of a change in security posture, you've always been able to travel without a Real ID. They've been pushing Real ID for more than a decade, 90% of people have one already anyway, the remaining stragglers simply don't care because there have never been any consequences.
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.
Exactly. I wish it was about money. It's about surveillance. The TSA even flatly says the quiet part out loud. "The fee is to make you _comply_."
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.
s/tactic to encourage compliance/blatant coercion/
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.
If the $45 is meant to be temporary, it can reasonably be looked as a fine to encourage people to get their RealID.
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.
The word for that is tax
And since Congress never approved it, well, that makes it illegal.
It was about immigration. I remember around 2015 when I was on F1 visa - in Michigan - you could get drivers license and it would expire when your visa expired. However my few lucky friends in NY/NJ/CA? Just got blanket 5yr expiry on their licenses from the day of renewal. I.E. their visas could expire well before their ‘IDs’ could. RealID was introduced to eliminate these discrepancies. And to get a realId now you need to show your visa documents/approvals.
I knew the Real ID requirements wouldn't be enforced, at least here in California, about a year before, after I saw the requirements: California can't enforce it because it would prevent too many undocumented people from flying.
Although, I thought it would just be delayed indefinitely. I suppose it effectively has been.
Too much of our economy depends on them.
My wife, who was on a H1B visa and managed to fly without an ID a few years back. They took her to some side room, asked a bunch of questions and looked her up based on name, DOB, address etc.
TSA pre-check, Global Entry, and Clear _infuriate_ me. It is privatization of public transportation and a net negative for society. In New York, JFK has closed off half of the security entrances for priority lanes, meaning a majority of passengers are forced into 50% of the entrances. The airport was built with state+federal funds, and now tax-paying residents are second-class to those who can afford $100/year. It's not even the amount, it's the principle.
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.
Airlines are not public transportation. Usually they're all privatized.
Any time the TSA comes back into the news I always go through old Remi videos all over again. They are masterpieces:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrof3Rf3_L8
Real ID is/was needed because every state has different requirements to get one.
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.
The fact that Real ID was introduced when I was in college and has been pushed back every year since shows that we don't actually need it.
That's because many Americans are against national ID at all cost for some reason. The very same Americans think that immigrants need to have their "I'm legal" folder with them at all times.
What are the practical benefits we're supposed to get from the RealID system? All I've ever heard is "national security" which is the excuse for every harmful thing.
For started, we stop talking about "Is Real ID worth it" and annual "Real ID for sure will be required next year"
Cancelling RealID would have those same benefits.
For example, all those stupid voter debates becomes moot.
RealID has nothing to do with voting. Residency and citizenship is already verified when you register to vote. RealID is not a requirement to vote.
> The very same Americans think that immigrants ...
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.
Blatant strawman. I'm a concrete counterexample if you insist on having one. The federal government should not have any involvement in routine photo ID. If that makes certain things difficult I see that as a feature, not a bug.
Major points are also missed. The fee is enabled at the federal law level: 49 U.S.C. § 114 & 49 U.S.C. § 44901
I had the option to get a "Real ID" the last time I renewed my driver's license, and did not. I forget which stupid bit of paper gave me trouble, but I had a valid passport (the Mother of All IDs), which was both insufficient to get a "Real ID" and sufficient to fly. It's a joke, a nuisance, and now a revenue source.
You're not going to believe it, but if you already have a passport - you don't need Real ID (in ideal world). I only got Real ID because I want to have zero questions about my immigration status.
>You're not going to believe it, but if you already have a passport - you don't need Real ID (in ideal world). I only got Real ID because I want to have zero questions about my immigration status.
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...
> DHS says they don't consider RealID to be reliable "proof" of immigration status[0][1], so you might consider rethinking that strategy.
I did, I became American and now have a US passport. That is just moving of the goal post by current admin.
A general reminder that every extra obstacle to getting a valid ID (or voting) disproportionately impacts the poor. They often lack the paperwork, the free time, and the money to deal with the extra process involved.
Absolutely. With Real ID, the biggest pain for a lot of people is proof of residency.
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.
You need two documents for proof. It's really not that hard. Poor that can't produce these documents probably can't afford a plane ticket either, so how is it a problem? Y'all have some weird ideas about how poor people are incapable of have two pieces of paper that have: 1) their name 2) their address
If only it were always that easy.
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...
Rather you lack perspective on the wider world. It is not uncommon to have an "unofficial" living situation and work under the table. In that scenario which documents would have your name and address on it? Will the DMV accept a purchase order from Amazon? Get real.
Even when I worked under the table and was out of status, I always had enough documents to get Real ID (but couldn't due to status).
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.
That's an interesting point about the bank statement. However you still need a second document IIUC. And to even open an account in the first place won't you need similar documentation? I've never tried opening one while in that position - I've always just brought my passport in with me while cursing KYC laws.
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.)
terrorists don’t have $45 each
It's meant to deter poor people, but it sounds better the way you said it.
Awwwww. I was going to hijack this plane and use it as a weapon in a divide attack, but $45?! You got me, TSA! That's just too rich for my blood!
> And don't get me started with all the paid express security lanes. Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.
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.
https://www.google.com/search?q=tsa+precheck+eligibility
Global Entry requires an in person interview, Precheck by itself does not
> Precheck by itself does not
Now! But, when it started it definitely required.
It was never about security only control of you and everyone else.
would love to know the revenue generated by bottled water pre and post 9/11
The TSA are literally terrorists. Their job isn't to stop terrorism, their job is to keep memory of terrorism fresh in the public's mind, to keep them afraid, to constantly remind people that they must be subservient to the federal government or else more people will die. It's flat out terrorism.
Or the fact that you have to re-up for Pre-TSA -- they already know who we are, they already have their databases, it's intentional money grab. But then again, so is PreTSA...
It is like the government loooed at Ryanair and thought "what if we were like that!"
"My ID? I identify as Andrew Jackson twice and Lincoln"
$45 pays for the cost of a much more tedious identity verification process.
No. In the early 2000s we called it security theater. Do we think that somehow they went from theater to serious? Hell no, it's all downward spiral. I constantly pen-test the TSA using humorous methods while traveling, it's a complete joke.
> Because of course only poor people can weaponize shoes and laptops.
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?
No generally not, there's not any real connection between the two groups.
The $45 pays for extra checks and scrutiny.
What are these checks and scrutiny and how are they applied in the time available? Given the time available is not great ("I'm on the next flight") and the amount of money is modest if humans are involved I'm intrigued to know what could be done that $45 would cover.
It's a database lookup that takes 5-15 minutes once you get to an available officer, but then depending on what it returns you may need additional screening, which will also need to wait for someone available.
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.
To me this makes no sense at all. The visual (or computational) ID check takes a second. Why is a manual entry of someone's name/DOB something that takes 5-15 minutes? This is a process control issue, not a technical problem.
You're misunderstanding. What's preventing me from finding someone on Facebook who looks kind of similar to me, finding out their address and phone number, and then claiming I'm them but forgot my ID? Or if I'm a serious criminal planning ahead, applying for a legitimate driver's license in that other person's name with easily-forgeable documentation that less strict DMV's accept when they aren't RealID?
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.
How about we restrict airport and aircraft access based on individual's ability to do harm, rather than on the information in some trusted database? It sure seems like the major incidents in my lifetime would have been better prevented by keeping people with guns and bombs out than people with poor paperwork skills…
The most "major" incident in recent history was 9/11 which involved neither guns nor bombs. So I don't know what you're talking about.
9/11 hasn't been a relevant threat since halfway through 9/11
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.
Don't forget about the critical check for whether or not you possess JD Vance meme contraband.
If you are able to follow simple written instructions and enter several pieces of information on a keyboard in less than five minutes... why would you work for the TSA?
5 minutes for $45 bucks seems expensive. Also, they don't have to check your ID if you don't have one so less time spent on that
This happened to me once, they just brought out someone (supervisor?) who asked questions about what addresses I've lived at, other similar questions I'd probably only know the answer to.
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.
Data brokers already know everything about every American so the TSA is just buying existing information from them. Then they can quickly quiz you on the information to verify that you are you. https://network.id.me/article/what-is-knowledge-based-verifi...
Bullshit. Also not legally required.
Got a bridge to sell you
what the fuck extra checks and scrutiny could they possibly need? They already go through an x-ray machine and get molested before we get on the plane, "real ID" or not.
There are more criteria to get through security than "not carrying prohibited items". Several of those are dependent on identity, which is why they verify identity.
It seems to me that all those other consideration only matter for international travel, while for domestic travel its an obvious waste of time from every angle.
Why would you think that? All four of the hijacked flights that led to the creation of the TSA were domestic flights.
I'm almost positive they get paid the same at the end of the day either way and the $45 just lines the pockets of someone on the top.
It's not that they'd pay individual employees more, it's that they'd hire more workers to account for the fact that their existing workers are tied up doing extra verification.
Though they might not do that either.
Even that fails a sanity test. They're not doing anything more than they would have done 25 years ago when the whole damn thing started.
I wasn't flying 25 years ago but I'm not sure what you mean, or how that's relevant actually. The point is just that it takes them more time to do the "extra screening" if you don't have your ID than the standard screening if you did have your ID.
Sure. A couple of things to clarify:
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.
> 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.
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).
Do you not see how an organization discouraging the use of something inefficient benefits as a whole?
Thats why cashless businesses exist, why you pay more for things that involve human attention instead of automated online solutions etc.
Who does it benefit? Not me. Maybe it benefits Mastercard and Visa.
Yes it benefits the consumer through lower prices, and in the case of cashless specifically, less tax fraud, etc
Most businesses near me offer lower prices to people paying with cash.
High interchange fees?
https://www.clearlypayments.com/blog/interchange-fees-by-cou...
or tax fraud, otherwise cashless is obviously cheaper
I am only guessing but I'd be surprised if it was a money grab. My instinct is that it's a way of highlighting RealID citizenship verification.
RealID is unrelated to citizenship.
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 think the comparison to the propiska system is incorrect. This Soviet system heavily controlled internal migration and was what ultimately dictated where someone was permitted to live. You couldn't relocate without one, and having this permission was tied to all sorts of local services. This system anchored people to where they were, and usually barred them from moving unless they had a good reason to.
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.
>RealID is unrelated to citizenship.
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.
My passport card is RealID compliant and doesn’t have my address anywhere on it.
Real ID/Drivers License being a proof of address is laughable. In my state (NY) they accept the following as proof of address for getting a new Real ID:
- 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?
> 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.
Doesn't matter, Passport is considered to be a real id.
> - Bank statement
> - 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.
> I can change my mailing address on any of them with a few clicks online, no actual verification needed.
Yes, but you’d have to be able to retrieve mail from that address?
Why, when you can access your bill online and print it?
Citizenship or lawful status, sorry! And you’re right.
But it’s totemic when you dig into conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants voting. RealID comes up a lot.
It's hardly proof of address. At best, I'd say it's proof of state residency.
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.
I certainly got a new plastic ID card within 2 weeks after filing the change-of-address form on DMV website, with a new address on it. They sent it to the new address. But mine was not RealID compliant (nor before nor after).
Let me just for one second give them the benefit of the doubt.
Could the $45 be a way to pay for some extra manual screening? Maybe? Or do they not deserve any benefit of the doubt.
They do not.
From what I've heard, the no-ID process does indeed feature additional screening. I think the passenger would fill out a form and the TSA would cross-check it with their information. This was free prior to the new ID push, but since now people need a special ID to fly instead of using their normal one, I'm guessing they made the process cost extra to disincentivize people from sticking with their IDs and just doing the free manual process every time. I'm not saying that's a good thing, I'm just saying that this is probably why they decided to try this.
Saying that there is “no legal requirement to show an ID” is truthy but misleading. Federal law gives the TSA authority over “screening” passengers: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/49/44901 (“The Administrator of the Transportation Security Administration shall provide for the screening of all passengers and property, including United States mail, cargo, carry-on and checked baggage, and other articles, that will be carried aboard a passenger aircraft operated by an air carrier or foreign air carrier in air transportation or intrastate air transportation.”).
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.
From TFA:
> 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.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/11/20/2025-20...
Well apparently Congress passed a law that said TSA could just demand money as long as they published a notice in the federal register.
as the PRA outlines (and the article goes through), publishing notice to the Federal Register does not suffice to get around the PRA, it is just a step in the process.
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.
Would declining to let you through security actually be a "penalty" (legally speaking), though? There are a ton of things you need to show papers for in the US; I can't imagine that all of them were pre-approved by the OMB.
You seem to be under the impression that the word "screening" means TSA can do whatever it wants. When in fact, if you click on the link under the word "Screening" in the own link you posted, there is a definition provided.
> (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.
The site is confusing since, if you click the link, you don't see the context. But that definition is for cargo screening only.
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 seem to be under the impression that the word "screening" means TSA can do whatever it wants.
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.
And reading further...The Administrator may approve additional methods to ensure that the cargo does not pose a threat to transportation security and to assist in meeting the requirements of this subsection.
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.
Yes, I did not want to copy paste the entire site. You did not post the full definition either and clipped a part of it as well.
> 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.
> doesn't matter that Congress didn't specifically require...
Actually it does matter. Chevron deference is gone. If Congress didn't specifically approve this method, it's not legal
Chevron just said that courts must defer to any reasonable interpretation of the statute by the agency. Getting rid of that just means that courts get to decide what words like “screening” mean. It doesn’t mean Congress needs to explicitly approve every method.
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.
To be fair, that's not exactly what Loper Bright says. It holds that the courts should read the statute independently and not assume that Agency rules or procedures are prima facie controlling where the statute is ambiguous.
That's not what the end of Chevron deference means. It means that if Congress didn't specifically approve this method, a court may find it illegal much more easily than was previously the case. The deference in "Chevron deference" was from the courts towards administrative agencies.
How can it be legally considered screening if you can pay $45 to bypass it entirely?
It doesn’t bypass the screening. It’s one screening method that’s cheaper to implement because the work is done by the Real ID verification, and another screening method that costs money to do different checks.
You have the right to travel without ID in the U.S. The TSA may demand it, and may tell you it's legally required, but that doesn't make that true.
"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...
Explain to me how qualified immunity is better than any ill it is supposed to address? And how is it that if you sue the government and win, then the judgement doesn't automatically award reasonable legal fees?
The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs. Their jobs require them to do things that people don't want them to do, like making you pay taxes or go to jail for committing crimes. They are prominent targets and can easily spend their entire career fighting off complaints.
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.
> The ill that it's supposed to address is people hassling government officials who are just doing their jobs.
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!
They might be defended by their agency (though being "in the right" doesn't appear to be a pre-requisite for that anyway). But they would/could still be subject to lawsuit after lawsuit, which hardly suits the intended goal of government, does it?
Make the losing side pay attorney fees. (This is a general fix for a lot of issues in the legal system.)
That's a good way to stop poor people from trying to sue anyone with better access to lawyers.
Poor people already cannot afford most legal services, and (other than a very small percentage of cases brought on a volunteer or nearly-volunteer basis at the goodwill of law firms) very rarely file suit without legal fees sought in restitution. Of those that don’t, it’s understood that recouping legal fees from lower income clients is far from guaranteed due to bankruptcy risk.
That doesn't cover SLAPP, where the purpose is not restitution, but, as the acronym puts it, a lawsuit "against public participation".
Working in the criminal justice system for awhile in some capacity will really give you perspective on what people have to deal with.
Still. I understand the officers having "qualified immunity". But not the agency.
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.
If the agency has become corrupt, tweaking immunity isn't going to fix it. Only voters can solve that by saying clearly "no, this is not the agency we want."
If that is what the voters want, then the victim minority can only reconsider their role in the social contract.
I do not understand officers having qualified immunity. They are armed for of the government and they have much lower expectations placed on them the normal citizens.
The fact that cops can break laws, actually harm people and then make prosecution basically impossible is bonkers.
It’s a sticky issue. Without QI, it seems very plausible that many law enforcement departments would be seriously hamstrung by continual waves of legal action and thus cost taxpayers a lot more to operate effectively. Not only would many people use a court of law as a fallback from the court of public opinion, but the legal industry would support this given the lucrative monetary and reputational advantages of suing the government.
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.
Indeed, it's those normal citizens who hold those expectations. Quite a lot of people voted explicitly for this, and are getting what they voted for.
This is indeed bonkers, because history is rife with examples of this ending badly. And that bonkers goes far deeper than just this issue.
Especially when the implication in the article is the police tried to delete a video from evidence -- and still ended up getting to hide behind qualified immunity.
Ugh.
Two separate things. Qualified immunity is just immunity from individual liability afforded to government agents when conducting government business, as long as they are conducting it properly.
> as long as they are conducting it properly.
I think ICE has clearly demonstrated that this is not true
Except the whole "as long as they are conducting it properly" part isn't actually true.
It might be true, it might not. Probably more useful to say "as long as they are conducting it properly" seems to have little impact on any of cases in which such immunity has been an issue.
Have you ever looked at legal proceedings involving criminals? It’s 95% noise and 5% signal. Criminals are, in general, bad people with a lot of time on their hands, and without qualified immunity you’d totally swamp the legal system with frivolous lawsuits.
If true, unlikely to help the working poor flying (or attempting to fly) because recourse to courts here is in the realms of the rich or benificent.
So, Frommers should fund a test case.
How many of the “working poor” can afford to fly and don’t have a drivers license?
All 50 states and 5 US territories issue RealID compliant drivers license/ID
Flying domestically is usually cheaper than driving once you get past the range of a tank of gas or two. Also, RealID isn't fully permeated yet - my state won't fully phase out non-RealIDs until 2029.
"once you get past the range of a tank of gas or two."
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.
> Few drive 600+ mi empty or alone.
Because if you are going 600+ mi alone with minimal luggage you fly, because it's cheaper.
The point is that it's nonsensical to say flying is cheaper than driving. Its oranges vs apple. Apples and oranges are fruit, flying and driving are transportation. But they're totally different.
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.
Asking people to drive 600+ miles for business is not a good use of business time, even if it is more expensive, typically.
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.
> 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.
Its intuitive, costs don’t scale to travel per family member when you drive from A to B like it does when you fly.
For a single person going between two major metro areas, for sure.
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.
No one is arguing the working poor exclusively fly, the point is there are plenty of people who do fly for whom the fee is significant.
I know. I was simply disputing the idea that ~600+ mile flights are cheaper than driving. They only are in very specific circumstances.
I would not describe travelling alone as "very specific circumstances." It is extremely common. 70% of all car trips are solo, and the average number of occupants for all car trips is 1.5. That you can get more bang for your buck driving if you have enough passengers and luggage doesn't change the fact plenty of people don't.
You are entirely right, because 98%+ trips in a car are commutes or errands that average 6 miles in distance.
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.
And even if there is an airport, it costs a lot more to fly into a small captive airport. For instance my parents live in South GA where the local airport has three commercial flights a day all on Delta and all fly to and from ATL
Yeah, that's part of what I'm getting at. Smaller airports can be much more expensive and lack options for transportation to the final destination. For exurb or rural destinations a rental car may be required.
RealID licenses cost extra where I live. Your job can buy you a plane ticket but they can't get you through TSA.
> RealID licenses cost extra where I live.
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.
I'm in Oregon, and that's the case - about $30 extra. More people than you think don't have access to supplemental documentation required to meet extra requirements – people who don't have current travel documents, people who've just moved into town, people who don't have current documentation of address (e.g. the homeless, people in the foster care system, etc.)
It's pragmatic to have: plenty of people don't or can't fly, and the cost of supporting this option is marginal.
> More people than you think don't have access to supplemental documentation required to meet extra requirements
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.
In CA it was cheaper and (far) easier to get a normal license and a passport.
for what its worth, my state made it unpleasant enough that it was easier to just got a non-real id and a renew the ol passport
Washington State. $7/yr more for a Real ID license - $42 more the 6 year license and $60 more for the 10.
https://dol.wa.gov/driver-licenses-and-permits/driver-licens...
Are you saying our state offers both RealID and none RealID driver’s licenses?
All states do (for now). Not everyone qualified to drive is capable of proving their identity to the level RealID requires.
As far as I know, Florida does not issue documents that are not REAL ID compliant.
And this is the same state that said they will have drivers license tests in English only
That would be sensible if the traffic signs were in English.
Traffic signs have symbols and shapes. You are allowed to drive in the US with an international drivers license if you don’t speak English. Are they going to arrest someone who doesn’t speak English and got a license in another state?
Can you read Chinese? Can you identify what this traffic sign means? https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/68/CN...
How about Japan?
What does a sign that says private road, residents and guests only.
Traffic signs are readable by almost anybody regardless of English language skills. A vision test is much more safety-valid than an English language test.
I disagree that traffic signs are readable regardless of language skills. Yes, it's just a matter of developing recognition for simple pictorial signs. You just have to learn it. If I put a French "No Vehicles" sign in Florida, nobody is going to have a clue what it means, even though there are no words on it, and that's dangerous.
Not recognizing or incorrectly interpreting "Crash I-9 N/B Exp Right 2 Lanes Closed Merge Left 2000 ft" is also dangerous, right?
Well countries have been willing to do reciprocal agreements with the US and other countries since 1926.
https://internationaldrivingpermit.org/what-is-an-idp/
Only if being illiterate also forbade you from driving, which it does not. You don't need to read the law to follow the law.
Well, there's a written exam.
Which can be completed by someone reading it verbally and writing down their answers, pretty much the same thing as financial and legal documents can.
California offers both. I renewed my license last year. I opted for a non Real ID version because I could renew online rather than spend hours at the DMV.
I know for a fact Kentucky offers both.
I renewed mine in May and still have a non-Real ID license.
Some states, including mine, don't offer RealID at all, but instead an "enhanced driver license" that is accepted alongside RealID. I don't even have that, because I already have a passport card, so there's no reason to spend the extra money.
If your job wants you to fly, it should buy you an id that lets you fly. Have you never applied for a visa to travel on a business trip?
yes, if there's one thing the working poor are known for, it's successfully extracting money from their employers. if uber wants you to rideshare, they should buy you a car, right?
How many “working poor” have jobs that require business travel?
If the answer is more than "zero" then the fee is harmful. Since I've been in similar positions (specifically as a contractor, where I had to front-load expenses and submit for reimbursement), it seems pretty likely to me.
Yes so we are going to optimize an entire system for this mythical “working poor” business traveler?
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 wasn't aware anyone had made the argument that this was an attempt to optimize anything. It's pretty obvious nobody's optimized anything in the TSA, ever.
> How many of the “working poor” can afford to fly and don’t have a drivers license?
What he really means is illegals who have fake ids who now can't get RealIDs.
Undocumented immigrants can have authentic, non-"RealID" ids, as things such as drivers licenses are the purview of the states, and infringement there upon is an attack on their constitutional sovereignty. California, for example, is perfectly happy to give out drivers licenses to anybody who can establish residency and pass the test, since there's no sense in creating a double jeopardy situation wherein because someone has committed one crime (illegally immigrating to California), they are forced to commit an additional crime (driving without a license). It's the same reason the IRS gives you a spot to declare your bribes and other illegal income.
> It's the same reason the IRS gives you a spot to declare your bribes and other illegal income.
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.
The accepted legal method of declaring illicit gains on your tax documents is pleading the 5th amendment for specific questions related to the source of the funds. Fun fact, you can also take deduct business expenses for many expensees related to illegal activities if you otherwise qualify for them, for example legal fees. There are specific restrictions but they are surprisingly narrow.
The IRS doesn’t ask for specifics so I don’t think it’s legally an admission of a crime. Saying “I took a bribe” doesn’t make you legally guilty of taking a bribe. You’d have to say when, from who, and for what.
What exactly makes RealID more secure than the drivers license my state has issued for the last 20 years?
The poor trying to fly is exactly why economy and even "premium economy" seating sucks and is getting worse for everyone else not is business class.
Would be nice if we could get rid of them, eh?
I sure do want to get rid of the entire concept of "economy" class.
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.
You must have a very different idea than I do of “economics of scale” if your idea is to make every ticket cost more so fewer people can afford it.
It’s annoying we don’t offer passport cards for free to people as a national government credential. The cost is similar to this fee, and your app and photo could be taken by TSA right at the checkpoint. You head to your flight after identity proofed, and your passport card could then be mailed to you.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
It is, but I think that's a separate issue. There's no authorization, let alone a mandate, to prove identity to move about. The mission, ostensibly, is to make air travel safe by ensuring that passengers don't bring dangerous items onto the plane. It's not to track who is going where.
> The mission, ostensibly, is to make air travel safe by ensuring that passengers don't bring dangerous items onto the plane.
No, it is to make it safe for any reason, which goes beyond whether or not they brought box cutters.
Ok, I'll concede that. That boils down to someone bringing something on the plane that can be used to cause trouble.
That could be... themselves.
You're right. I vaguely remember a faux hijacking (or a real hijacking but not with the intent to do harm) wherein an unarmed man caused a flight diversion to seek asylum in Italy. He entered the cockpit while the door was open for service. I don't remember the details, but now I'm very curious if identification would have resulted in successful interdiction. It certainly would not have prevented 9/11 since those perps were known to both domestic and foreign intelligence. So what do we do?
To bring it back to the root question: how does REAL ID mitigate these threats?
Because it helps the TSA definitively identify whether someone is one of those people who are known threats. Prior to this standard, there were hundreds of different standards for IDs all with different levels of validation and there was no requirement for any cooperation in sharing information useful to validate them.
I didn't personally experience it (I was too young), but I think that was part of "the mission" since pre-9/11. The point of the ID check is to make sure the boarding ticket and ID match.
In effect that tracks who is going where.
You could even double them up as government issued voter-ID and save all that hassle every 4 years. Or the current round of random stop-and-search going on...
The people eligible for passports are not the same group of people eligible for voter id since there are a few jurisdictions where non-citizens can vote in certain elections. Voting is also a responsibility of the states (even at the federal level), so there isn't really such thing as a federal voter id since each state has different eligibility requirements for voters that don't necessarily align with passport eligibility. Additionally, passport cards aren't interchangeable with passports in most countries.
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"
FWIW, REAL-ID is not about U.S. citizenship: A passport issued by any country is considered "compliant" with the REAL-ID Act for air travel or any other purpose, regardless of the person's U.S. immigration status. Some politicians seem to have deluded themselves to think that requiring REAL-ID will stop "illegal aliens" from flying. But it won't. Many foreigners in the U.S. (regardless of U.S. immigration status) have an easier time getting REAL-ID (a passport from their country of citizenship) than some U.S. citizens.
My comment was addressing passport cards as a national ID and voter ID.
And also provide an API for online services to use so we are not beholden to Alphabet and Apple.
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?
> 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.
I'm sure some young guns from a techbro company would love to dive into the data lake and make a proposal. They might need to take a few reels of tape away for offsite analysis, but don't worry..
The reels of tape already exist at Apple/Alphabet/Tmobile/ATT/Verizon/Meta/Microsoft/Chase/BoA/etc, subject to secret FISA warrants. What difference does it make?
"government issued voter-ID"
Gasp! Checking for IDs while voting is fascist! It's like Germany 1937.
~~~While it's not a passport, I believe most states have free id cards that are "realid" compliant.~~~
Edit: I'm wrong.
> I believe most states have free id cards that are "realid" compliant.
None in the mid-Atlantic or SE that I've seen. Some states offer free gov docs under limited programs, eg:unaccompanied homeless youth.
I stand corrected, at least in Pennsylvania (1). I misremembering the issues surrounding requiring Id to vote. The law that was struck down did provide a free id that would have been suitable for voting; however, that isn't required and no longer exists, and there was no mention I could find of if it would have been realid compliant.(2)
(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...
Scanning https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/real-id/ I'm not sure there is a single state that provides ID without a fee of some sort, across the board.
Exactly zero states give you real IDs for free.
> Requiring ID won’t make us safer, but it enables surveillance and potential control of our movements.
Remember that you can opt out of TSA's facial recognition https://www.ajl.org/campaigns/fly
I tried but they lied and told me it wasn't an option.
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.
You can and should. Some TSA workers get pissy over it, which is weird. It's there to replace them. The trainers don't, its an option you have the right to.
And exactly what good does that do? The government already has your face tied to your ID and knows you’re flying
Well good. They can stop pestering me for real id, preventing me from moving directly to the security line without having to show id, and stop trying to force me into giving up my face model everytime.
- 2D ID photo vs 3D scan
- 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.
Neither does a 3D scan like an iPhone. As far as facial recognition better because it has up to date pictures. This has been solved without up to date pictures for years. My phone can - on device recognize my son from the time he was 9 to today at 25. If my phone can do it on device, do you think this is a hard problem on a server farm?
I'm quite perplexed on what point you are trying to make by dying on this hill.
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"?
Yes it’s just as meaningless as putting a cover over your laptop camera, any bad actor that can access your camera can also access your microphone and you can get a lot more information from a microphone.
> meaningless as putting a cover over your laptop camera
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
It’s privacy concern theatre without comprehending how good modern facial recognition is from one photo even when running locally on a modern smart phone. The TSA already knows you are on the airplane regardless.
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.
Well, the type of people who think otherwise got the nude body scanners stopped back in the day (https://www.wired.com/2013/01/tsa-abandons-nude-scanners/)
Meanwhile it's not clear what it accomplishes to spend time advocating that the slightest pushback on any of this is pointless
Yes and the people who think that vaccines cause autism are now in power trying to kill vaccines…
You are in good faith equating TSA face scans and body scans with vaccination?
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?
Yes it’s both as illogical and neither is based on facts on the ground
And my fingerprints too, but I don't have to be a willing participant.
So it’s meaningless…
Does facial recognition work better with one photo or many?
Does it matter? If you carry your phone with you they can already track you as well as tag readers when you are driving.
Why should the default be "more tracking" and not "as little as justifiably necessary"?
It doesn't even save time, in fact it takes more time screwing around with the camera
What problem is any of this solving?
You are being “tracked” that you got on the plane regardless, even your credit card company gets your complete itinerary where you traveled from and to and can (and does) use that for advertising.
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)
Training requires a lot of photos and face models need to be more recent to be effective.
And yet my iPhone can recognize my son from the time he was 9 to the time he is 25 with just one shot labeling…
Let's be honest, that just puts you on the extra scrutiny list going forward
Seems quite dangerous. In my country, this was the norm for local flights - usually smaller planes, 1-2hr flights. It was common that if you could not attend a meeting, a colleague would go with your ticket. Nobody cared.
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.
TSA's searches without a warrant are illegal.
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".
Unfortunately almost every court that has considered the question has concluded otherwise. https://repository.law.umich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article...
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.
The courts are allowed to be wrong, it's true.
If you think you know better, you should fight your own test case and publish a running report on how it’s going instead of armchair lawyering.
You are entering government property so they have a right to search you. Just like if you enter a sporting event they have a right to search you. You are free to not use either service.
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.
Read the fourth amendment since you clearly didn't the first time.
As an attorney, I can tell you that a naive reading of words in the Constitution is not how law is decided.
Believe it or not, I don't care what authoritarians feel about the 4th amendment that was designed to be read and interpreted free of the courts.
I suppose you tell cops at a traffic stop that you don't need a license plate because you're an individual not engaging in commerce.
And how, exactly, are you certain of this intended design?
"shall not be violated" leaves no loopholes. Just like the second 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.
I didn’t ask you what the words say; anyone can read them. I asked you why you believe, based on the historical evidence, that the Constitution isn’t supposed to be interpreted by our courts.
> interpreted by our courts.
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.
I answered your question. Your failure of comprehension is not my problem.
You did not. This is the answer of someone who has lost the argument and knows it, but refuses to admit it. The door is that way; kindly let yourself out.
Since you're pretending to be a lawyer and losing an argument I'll highlight the part that answers the question:
>"shall not be infringed" and "shall not be violated" do not leave loopholes. It's quite clear.
I am not pretending to be a lawyer and will happily send you my bona fides. Feel free to email me at otterley at otterley dot org.
There's a branch of government who's job is to write laws, who's job is to interpret laws and one who's job is to enforce laws.
Which one are you?
All three. The people. Do you know what a Constitutional Republic is? Do you realize the American government is a government of servants? That some of them have forgotten that changes nothing.
Of the people, by the people, and for the people still stands:
>Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
>Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
>But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863
You are a person, not the people. I disagree with you on what the Constitution says. Luckily, The Constitution outlines how to resolve that dispute. [0]
> ... Abraham Lincoln November 19, 1863
Abraham Lincoln was four score and seven years late to the founding, I'm not sure what his opinion has to do with it.
[0]https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/art...
This is actually incorrect; Article III does not establish judicial review. Judicial review was established by Marbury v. Madison in 1803.
The Fourth Amendment only applies to places flying a flag with gold fringes
If Real ID is so good, why do we have CLEAR? Why can I not skip the line with RealID?
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 has nothing to do with security. You’re just paying to cut the security line.
Disagree.
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.
Fun fact, I rarely have to show my ID when flying in the EU. But what I don’t understand is why so many people don’t have an ID in the US. Seems like one of the very basic service governments should provide.
I fly between various countries in western Europe a dozen times a year and have done so for a decade and every single time I've boarded a plane I have had to shown a photo ID with my name on it that matches my name on the plane ticket. Most of the time the gate agent barely looks at the ID/name, but it is required to hand it to them. I have never once just walked on a plane without showing ID with my name on it, and I have never seen anyone in line in front of me do so, ever, and I'm talking hundreds of flights at this point. It doesn't have to be a passport, I see older Spanish people showing their driver's license only all the time, but it has to have a photo and a name (to match the name on the ticket in some way) and be a state issued ID. Again, they seem very lenient with that whole name matching thing and checking the authenticity of the ID (it isn't scanned, just visually inspected), but I've never seen anyone just say 'no' and get on a plane.
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.
https://www.iberia.com/es/fly-with-iberia/documents/spain/
Plenty of people have an ID in the US, the issue is whether or not those IDs are considered valid to get past security in the airport.
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.
It's a product of the lingering sentiment of a country founded on not wanting to pay taxes, mixed with (often warrented) mistrust of the government and truely insane immigration laws all jumbled togeather. Yeah, we would be better of with something universal and more robust then the toilet paper they print social security numbers on, but we got the system it was possible to pass through congress.
That’s completely false. You ALWAYS have to show your ID card to fly in the EU. Always.
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 once told TSA this: "I lost my Driver's License, and the state won't issue another for a month maybe. I understand there's an extra screening pat-down."
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.
"YMMV"
I've had my testicles squeezed, fondled, but thankfully, mostly avoided.
Don't tempt me with a good time.
A number of years back I somehow managed to lose my driver's license between the car and the airport door. Even called the limo company to have the driver look. But <poof> apparently. Normally I have a backup ID but this was a very last minute and short trip.
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 if an airline requires ID, is that legal? (Say to e.g. sell discounted tickets to 65+ people, or to avoid people selling tickets on)?
Yes, because private companies aren’t subject to the PRA like federal agencies are.
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...
TSA has been an elaborate ruse to create a recurring revenue service program called “clear” and tsa-pre. Of course they are also able to monetize the ruse itself.
It's an elaborate ruse to condition Americans to the 4th amendment not being a real thing. The PATRIOT ACT which created the TSA was written by Joe Biden after the Oklahoma City bombing and passed after being reintroduced following 9/11 to end-run around the 4th amendment.
And conveniently, international airports "count" as "border zones" for the supposed "100-mile border zone" exception
Not quite. The bush administration exploited the 9/11 situation and did it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Patriot_Act
> The PATRIOT ACT which created the TSA was written by Joe Biden
Citation needed. I believe you are mistaken.
It's a real head-scratcher that the cohort that claims government ID is unattainable for some people hasn't taken up this issue. "Real ID" isn't something that is just delivered to you. Now we're going to charge money not to have it?
In my state Real ID is just delivered to you.
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!
What REAL ID-compliant document doesn't require an office visit? Also, if you're paying for it, it isn't accessible.
Democrats usually complain that ID requirements suppress voters’ rights. Your right to travel isn’t as thoroughly suppressed by this as the right to vote is. It’s not a strong excuse, but it’s not totally inconsistent either. And, at least before this change, there were still ways to go through security screening without ID. If those are not allowed any more, maybe Dems will take up the issue.
Which cohort is that? In my experience, the left has been against requiring internal passports since day one.
Frankly, the entire agency is unconstitutional. From the fact that they basically exist under a general warrant issued by the supreme court (although they invented a new catagory, "administrative search", which doesn't fundamentally change what it is) to the restrictions on the right to assembly requires free travel as well, although the current legal underpinnings are "creative", the 10th admendment which grants all non enumerated powers to the states, to the restrictions on bearing arms on the plane and a half dozen other parts. About the only part they might be able to stand on is commerce again, but then so much travel in the larger states remains in the state (ex dallas/houston, san fran/LA) requiring seperate security zones.
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.
Inventing categories is what the court does. The Constitution is incredibly brief, and gives zero guidance on how to clarify conflicts. It has always been full of "common sense" exceptions, like criminalizing threats (despite the unqualified "freedom of speech" language) or probable cause (police can invade your house if they know you are committing a crime right now).
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.
The constitution doesn't provide a "common sense" loophole. Much of it is written in absolutist language because that was the actual intention. The amendment process is provided to open "common sense" loopholes if everyone agrees they are common sense, not for the courts to gradually erode the language until the federal goverment is doing things the founders explicitly fought the revolutionary war over.
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.
The passage of the alien and sedition acts without constitutional amendment disproves that idea.
At first glance that seems to be true, but when you look at the arguments at the time, who made them and how much of it was walked back, it just looks like the usual legislative panic, same as 911. It doesn't make the original intentions wrong, anymore than what happens when you release open source software and it takes on a life of its own under new maintainers. The failure to understand the long term reprocusion of basically ignoring the actual language of the original document puts one in a place where literally nothing matters except what you can ram through congress and get supreme court approval over during a time of panic or before the other side takes over again.
Thats not a constitutional democracy, thats just anarchy and rule by whoever can buy the most seats.
It seems to me it is more of a penalty to encourage people to get Real ID while still allowing them to fly. I would imagine most air travelers have some kind of real id, passport, actual real id DL or global entry card. Very few people cannot get real id due to name inconsistency issues, but most are just lazy. Allowing them to fly for $45 seems reasonable to me, particularly if they cause delays at security.
There are 15 other forms of ID that TSA accepts, so Real ID isn’t necessary: https://www.cchfreedom.org/national-id/
Here's the actual TSA list: https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification
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.
Lazy or worried about an encroaching government?
This has to make you wonder if the entire Security Theater is for security or money. I mean, if the RealID is supposed to increase security, then how does plopping $45.00 down help security? I'm pretty sure most terrorists can afford that. There is also the possibility that the RealID is simply another way the government is using to keep tabs on us 24/7/365.
In the USA it is possible to fly without an ID?
Yes, because the federal government can't assume that everyone has an ID, since they don't issue a universal ID. Any attempt to fix the fact that Americans don't have universal federal identification has met stiff resistance from a variety of angles, from privacy proponents to religious nuts who think universal identification is the mark of the beast.
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.
>Yes, because the federal government can't assume that everyone has an ID
But this does not have to be a federal ID. Could be just any ID.
It feels to me like the more into the future we get the more backwards these policies seem. Bring on the national ID, I say.
> Yes, because the federal government can't assume that everyone has an ID, since they don't issue a universal ID.
I'm from a 3rd world country and we have a national id, the usa is weird in the strangest things.
It's a deep-seated cultural paranoia that the federal government is out to get us. Initially, the US tried to be a confederation like the EU or Canada, but it turned out that we needed slightly more federal power than that to stay as a unified country. But the tension between "loose coalition of independent states" and "unified government that grants some powers to the states" is a pretty fundamental theme throughout US politics.
It's out to get you whether you have a credit card sized piece of plastic or not. Dying on that hill just creates so much wasted time and money for everyone.
It isn't paranoia, it's an actual thing that they have and continue to do. They regularly terrorize the people of the United States. Ask your nearest nonwhite citizen, they will tell you.
> deep-seated cultural paranoia that the federal government is out to get us.
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.
Assuming illegal immigrants should be deported as they broke the law and the government has been doing since Obama, wouldn’t having a standardized national id like every other country in the world simplify things? People only have their passport as a national id is strange, as that’s for usage in other countries.
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.
I've been noticing the same category of oddity for a while now.
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 call this being "exactly wrong".
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.
> the federal government is out to get us
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.
In most of the modern world, it's impossible to go through life without a bank account at the minimum (which requires an ID), but not so in the USA, there you can live your whole life, paying with, and accepting cash, storing it in your matress.
Among the man weird corners of US national ID politics, is the set of Americans who think a national ID is an unforgivable invasion of liberty but that an ID should be required to vote.
That sort of makes sense though? It's the minimal level of government involvement required. Presumably you can't carry out a fair election without some form of gatekeeping. Whereas why exactly should ID be required to do mundane daily things including traveling long distances?
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.
A lot of people are making general statements, and I'm not sure how valid they are. For example, in my neck of the woods (Canada), I have flown without ID and without passing through security. I would be surprised if the same wasn't true in the US. What I left out: the flights weren't through an international airport and didn't connect to an international airport. Same airport, different flight (one that did connect to an international airport) and passing through security was a requirement. In that case, as well as domestic flights through international airports, ID checks were the domain of the airline.
Within the Schengen area, you don't really need an ID to get on a plane either. In fact you can go through security screening in many places without an ID or a valid ticket.
We do have smaller regional airports in the US, but those smaller airports do still have TSA-staffed security if they serve commercial flights. The TSA considered eliminating security at those smaller domestic-only airports back in 2018, but after it hit the media, they reversed course on it.
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.
There are whole catagories of people without "ID" as such, like say underage children or people unable to drive. ID's in the USA have traditionally been either drivers licenses or passports. Many states have added non-drivers license IDs for handicapped, elderly, etc, but AFAIK they aren't particularly popular since those catagories of people don't tend to need them until they suddenly find themselves in a situation needing one.
It is, but it’s difficult. I am down visiting New Zealand and 3 times I have flown domestically here and there no ID check. I buy a ticket online, check in online, and scan a barcode at the gate. Is New Zealand an exception, or do a lot of countries not require an ID for domestic flights, and the US is the exception?
EU technically doesn’t require government-issued ID to fly either. They often don’t check for ID at all, and in cases where they do, legally any card with your name and photo on it would work for this „identification“. EU generally doesn’t legally require you to carry ID - but they can and will hassle you more and more if you don’t.
I had a friend who flew out of SFO without an ID for many years without much issue. It was much more difficult for them to get back.
SFO is one of the few international airports with private security instead of TSA.
Yes.
If you lost your ID while traveling, what would another option be?
Usually you go to either a police station or an embassy and receive a temporary permit that has a validity of one week, just enough to get to the place of registration and re-issue your ID.
...how? California doesn't have an embassy in New York.
Surely New York has enough police stations to visit and declare a loss of ID.
IDs are a state-level concern in the US federal system. California IDs are issued by California. It’s like going into a Spanish government building to get your Belgian passport replaced. They will have no records of you, and nothing to do.
>It’s like going into a Spanish government building to get your Belgian passport replaced.
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's definitely just to get people to fly with a valid ID without ambushing the enormous number of people who have been living under a rock and don't realize they need a real ID. Otherwise they'll have a dozen or so people freaking out at the airport every single day for years.
Practically speaking, could I fly inside the U.S. without an ID? Just ask for the manual pat down? I assume I’ll need to show up like an extra hour early to give them time to harass me about it, but what are the chances that this works at all, vs just being turned away regardless of what’s legal?
I was pickpocketed a few years ago and was able to fly domestically without ID.
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.
Huh, interesting. This is fascinating, would love to see an edutainment YouTube video on this, I’ll have to see if there is something
You have the right to try and fly without an ID. The airlines also have the right to tell you to buzz off and get lost and the airport operator has the right to decide they don’t want you in the building and trespass you if you don’t scram.
This isn’t like the 1st amendment.
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”.
They very much are in the loop if you get on a plane to fly internationally
You have an absolute "right to travel" (see the 14th amendment and other cases as recently as 1999), but you're also absolutely correct that "common carriers" can can refuse commercial service and you can be criminally trespassed from an airport, BUT TSA can not charge you a fee to attempt to fly.
Unlike other service providers, a common carrier by definition cannot refuse service to anyone willing to pay the fare in the tariff. Common carrier laws are some of the oldest consumer protection laws, enacted to protect travelers and shippers of goods against predatory and discriminatory pricing. Federal law recognizes the "public right of transit" by air, and requires boith airlines and Federal agencies to respect it.
This is only true for the "ticket purchase" not for the service itself.
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.
This is not true, in at least 2 respects: (1) a common carrier has a legal duty not just to sell a ticket but to provide transportation according to the tariff, and (2) this means an airline can't order a passenger not to board, or order them off the plane, unless they have violated some terms of the tariff. Some airlines have tried to create their own no-fly lists, but without opening up another area of discussion these have no more basis in law than the government's no-fly list, and have never (so far as I know) been reviewed by courts.
There are customers banned from airlines for various reasons.
But the airlines don't really give a crap, southwest started basically as an air bus, show up buy a ticket get on. No reservation, no id, nothing.
The airlines don't even check ID most of the time with these electronic boarding passes if your not checking luggage.
If you are flying domestically, the airline doesn’t care. They know that someone bought a ticket to get pass security and that ticket matched the ID of the person who got through security. They don’t lose money and thier is no increased safety risk.
They do check your ID for international flights
The airlines are not in charge of airport security. TSA, a government agency, handles that.
Kinda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screening_Partnership_Program
About 75% of the time I don't get asked for ID at all when flying within Schengen Europe. I understand technically there isn't any border crossing, but they have absolutely no idea who is actually on the plane. Wild.
That's because you have the right to travel freely between Schengen countries.
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.
You also have the right to travel freely within the domestic US.
I understand peoples argument ... but isn’t this like a restaurant sign saying “no shoes, no shirt, no service”.
Yes, the law doesn’t require people to wear shirts. But the law also doesn’t require you to be serviced.
Interesting, the main and probably only reason I know this is a legitimate site and not some random person's blog post is because I heard about Frommers from the movie Eurotrip.
No one should be forced to give an ID for a domestic flight. It always used to be that way. Every day there is huge amount of chipping away at our freedoms.
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.
Does a small part of you not feel the urge, however, to check who people are before letting them on your plane. By which I mean, after 9/11 and all that happened there.
No, why would it? When I take the bus, subway, or train, nobody is checking IDs - at most they check if I have a valid ticket, which can be bought with cash.
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.
Let's say in theory the TSA is doing their job and verifying there is nothing dangerous on the plane, it would seem to me then anyone should be allowed to fly. I don't see what we're supposed to even be achieving beyond a warrantless harassment campaign against people the government decides it doesn't like?
Not at all. I wouldn't allow an event such as that in history to remove everyone's freedom, including mine.
There are many other ways a person can inflict damage much larger than that without a plane and easier.
THANK YOU!
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.
Citizens Council for Health Freedom has a whole page about Real ID. [0] Senator Rand Paul has a bill to repeal it. Crucially, you can still fly without a Real ID - there are 15 other forms of acceptable ID.
[0]: https://www.cchfreedom.org/national-id/
There was no TSA in 1996 just private security screeners.
I don't care, sure it's a clear money grab but it's a small price to pay for the (admittedly little) privacy
My procrastination is starting to turn into a political stance. This isn't the first time it's happened.
> As described by Clinton’s counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke, this idea was conceived overnight as a way to show that the government was “doing something” in response to a plane crash that turned out to have been caused by a faulty fuel tank, not terrorism.
To be honest the worry about terrorists hijacking planes under Clinton proved to be quite prescient only a few years later.
And they had their IDs checked at the airport when they boarded the planes they hijacked. The security theatre here had no benefit.
I don't have a real ID and don't plan to get one, but I also basically never fly anymore (been over 5 years). However this is certainly further incentive for me not to fly - wonder if airlines will see a slight decline in travelers over next few years due to this.
Don’t think legality matter anymore
$45 for KBA is crazy. They call somewhere and ask you what addresses you recognize, companies you may have loans with etc. The old stuff.
I want to talk about Chevron deference. Trust me, I'm going somewhere with this.
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.
Since this is proof that the original and stated point of supplying ID is not valid can we just dispense with the whole charade? It clearly isn't about security if a measly $45 is all it takes to circumvent it so let's just get rid of it entirely.
The emperor not only has no clothes, he's shouting that fact at us.
I recently started going through The Mary Tyler Moore show and was struck by the timeliness of this quote from the very first episode:
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?
Fun fact: for internal flights in New Zealand you don't need (and aren't asked for) ID. There is security but pretty lightweight. No shoes, laptops, belts, liquids, scanner crap.
This is a really stupid situation. We shouldn't be obstructed from flying without ID as long as we pass the regular security checks, and those security checks shouldn't be unreasonable.
What can we do to get there? Is anybody organizing?
I want to open my wallet. Where can I donate?
bankroll for president's private militia aka ice
Don't forget federal sales taxes in the form of tariffs.
And also the $8 trillion he added to the national debt push interest payments to be more than the previous defense budget or Medicare.
Oh good another poor tax, there hasn't been one for a hot minute.
I've flown without ID twice. Once because I lost my ID, once to prove to a friend that it could be done. This fee will fail for the same reason that flying without ID works at all - the law is quite clear on it.
Did you have to show the airline your ID when checking in?
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.
My brother did this once and if you print your boarding pass before arriving you don't have to check in (obviously this is for a domestic flight with no checked bags). The TSA will question you and swab everything in your suitcase though.
> Did you have to show the airline your ID when checking in?
No.
Most airlines only start asking for ID if you want to check a bag. But not for check-in.
Airlines do not care. American was once, United another time. I had a boarding pass and they were happy with that
So when TSA asked for your ID, what did you do and what did they then do?
You just tell them "Don't have one". Then they (most likely a second TSA agent so you don't hold up the line) run a quick interview to try and establish who the heck you are, and if you can be trusted to be let onto a plane.
Do not have one. Asked for my name, if i had any proof of it (i had a few credit cards in my name) lots of other questions. very thorough pat down. disassembled by bag slowly. took 40 min.
This article seems oddly hung up on the legality of providing ID.
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.
Common carriers can refuse to board you for legitimate reasons. Not having ID is not one of those as far as I know. (Obviously international travel is an entirely different beast. That's neither here nor there.)
I hadn't heard about this, but this is blatantly against the explicit and implied "right to travel" that's baked into the 14th amendment and had over a 156 years of precedence since Paul vs. Virginia.
"illegal"
At what point has that stopped literally anything this government has done?
Not sure why the title was editorialized, but this is literally just one person's opinion. The title makes it sound like the legal community universally agrees, which is not true.
It’s also bad legal commentary . The TSA seems to have broad legal authority. The more vague a law is, the more authority the executive branch has , not less (assuming it’s constitutional, and our constitution is also deliberately limited)
There are two avenues for recourse: lobbying your congressman or suing the TSA . I’m guessing the ACLU / EFF and other groups haven’t yet sued because the TSA’s legal authority is broad.
As discussed in the original article, John Gilmore (co-founder of EFF) did sue. "His complaint was dismissed on the basis of TSA policies that said travelers were still allowed to fly without ID as long as they submitted to a more intrusive 'pat-down' and search. The court didn’t rule on the question of whether a law or policy requiring ID at airports would be legal, since the TSA conceded there was no such law."
Sounds about right
It's an interesting argument. Is there a highly-credible, authoritative source? Maybe someone like the EFF or ACLU? There are lots of ideas online about the law, of varying credibility, and I'd hesitate to risk a lawsuit over Internet advice.
The author has been qualified as an expert witness in several venues.
Expert witnesses are not reliably credible authorities. They are people with credentials hired to help win lawsuits. I'm sure the author knows more than I do, but that doesn't say much.
It's not about his testimony on this particular issue. In fact, it does not appear that he has given any. It's about his qualifications to potentially testify. Even so, in American courts (in which he has previously qualified,) the qualification process is adversarial and involves both direct and cross-examination, so if he wasn't actually qualified, the opposing party would certainly argue as much.
The reality of expert witnesses is not that they are authoritative sources outside the courtroom, but witnesses for one party. It's a job - sometimes for people who didn't find much success in their field - and they are paid by the party that calls them to testify.
Everything in a US courtroom is adversarial; every witness is cross-examined and their credibility can be questioned.
While I concur with your hesitation, my first reaction on hearing about the fee was "Didn't they say you couldn't fly without a realid? Why am I able to fly without one then?" The idea that they may not be able to bar you without one jives with how this is playing out. Another commenter in this post also mentioned flying without id, which I also thought wasn't possible.
If you don't have Real ID they perform an equivalent background check at the airport which they charge you $45 for.
But it's something they're choosing to do, not something that is required.
of course none of this nonsense applies to those than can afford private travel
Previously:
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
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46138101
Yep. It's important to highlight this is not about flying without ID. It's flying without the new federal ID and their attempt to coerce people into getting the federal ID.
“New” Real ID is 21yrs old at this point.
They've been pushing it back every year because states haven't implemented it uniformly. Washington gave me a non real-ID card in 2022. IIRC the only real-ID option at the time was an Enhanced ID which can be used to cross the border from Canada and costs $100.
Washington gave me a non real-ID driver's license in November 2025. I don't plan on upgrading it unless forced to since I also have a passport.
Get a passport card or a Global entry card .. easier to carry on you for domestic travel.
> easier to carry on you for domestic travel.
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.
What about dangerous thoughts or opinions that run against government interests? That seems rather dangerous as well, don't you think?
As the other comments inform you, many states were not coerced into adopting it until very recently. In these ~dozen states the majority of people do not have the new federal ID. There are Enhanced Driver's Licenses as alternatives the to the invasive federal ID but most just have the normal state ID that work perfectly well; excepting these contrived situations the feds use to try to force people with.
I remember flying before the TSA, it was pretty great in part because you could do things like go to the gate to meet arriving family, or walk your child to the gate before they departed as an unaccompanied minor, with the expectation someone was meeting them at the gate on the other side. There has never been a single observation or piece of information that has indicated anything other than the TSA is an unconstitutional waste of money doing security theatre to support a jobs program for societal rejects. All that said, I've been enrolled in Global Entry since it started, CLEAR since it started, and Pre-Check since it started (which later was included w/ Global Entry) because I have places to be and people to see, and I need to just get on with my life.
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?
45 dollars? Form 415? Maybe I'm jumping at shadows but this smells like a Trump dogwhistle.
Where does the fee money go then? Into 45’s pocket?
The government, of course.
I think I must be confused, but after reading many of the replies, I can't figure this out. Is the standard American perspective that one shouldn't have to show any form of identification to go through security, get on a plane, and travel anywhere within the United States? How does anyone associate your ticket to your identity?
My American perspective is unless I'm participating in an activity that definitely requires carrying and presenting ID, I don't need to.
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.
> Maybe opening a bank account, but really it should be up to the bank if they want to see my ID.
KYC rules make it require much more than showing an id.
You don't need to carry ID/license to operate a vehicle. People (including I'm sure some cops) think you do but you only have to possess the license and present it to the cops if asked. Presenting can include going home to retrieve it from your dresser drawer. The US isn't (or wasn't) a "show me your papers" country.
Can't speak for the "standard American perspective," but no, you should not have to show identification. Why should someone need to be tracked to travel? Why does a ticket need to be associated to identity?
I'm not stating that they should be. I first want to make sure this is not just a question of the "Real ID". I can think of a couple of reasons that would throw a wrench in the works:
- 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".
We do have to show ID. But the federal government said it's not enough to use a normal state driver's license or passport. You need a special "Real ID" that's somehow allegedly better. Your old driver's license that you can pay for booze with, open a bank account with, and you know, drive with, isn't proof enough of who you are to ride on a plane.
Edit: I should note that I have one. But lots of people don't, because most people never replace their driver's license card.
I think this is where my confusion lies. It seems like many people are saying no ID of any kind -- passport, "real ID", driver's license, ... -- should be provided, period. So ostensibly a 10 year-old could show up at the airport and decide to travel on their own (and if we only ID "young-looking people" then we get into a similar discussion as to why one should always ask for proof of age when buying alcohol).
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).
Passport works. You don't need real ID. Its only purpose is to deal with states where the normal driver license issuing process isn't up to whatever standards the feds dictate.
A passport is just as tedious to get as a real id. As far as I'm aware, there's no compelling security benefit that the government has articulated about how standardizing licenses improves security.
> How does anyone associate your ticket to your identity?
Why does anyone in this picture need to associate my ticket with my identity?
Just replying here in case it's more visible, but:
- what if you're on a no-fly list? wanted criminals?
- underage?
Why would there be a need to associate my ticket to my identity?
Just replying here in case it's more visible, but:
- what if you're on a no-fly list? wanted criminals?
- underage?
I don’t think a no-fly list should exist. Either a person has committed a crime and should be prosecuted, or not. It doesn’t make sense to me to say, you’re too dangerous to be allowed on a plane but not dangerous enough to put in jail.
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.