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The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

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Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#121

Post by OkayPhysicist »

Izikiel43 wrote: post #105
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#122

Post by kube-system »

t-3 wrote: post #99
raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#123

Post by chickensong »

eli wrote: post #107
crazygringo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Flying without ID just gets you the full patdown treatment. It’s not like they’re tracking down people to vouch for you.

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#124

Post by AbrahamParangi »

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#125

Post by rayiner »

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#126

Post by jacobgkau »

fragmede wrote: post #62
Forgeties79 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$45 x millions of people (some multiple times) = an incredibly consequential amount of money

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#127

Post by crazygringo »

eitally wrote: post #115
crazygringo wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

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.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#128

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

deepsun wrote: post #118
BryantD wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My passport card is RealID compliant and doesn’t have my address anywhere on it.

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#129

Post by [deleted] »

crazygringo wrote: post #36
paxys wrote: post #23

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 la…

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 th…

[deleted]

Re: The TSA's New $45 Fee to Fly Without ID Is Illegal

#130

Post by mandeepj »

paxys wrote: post #23

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 la…

> 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

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