[delayed]

What if the police department has Teslas?

Quite a modest proposal.

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.

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.

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.

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"

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.

Assuming 100M "classic" ID checks (being generous): congrats, you just paid for two days of running the military!

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.

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.

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...

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'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.

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.

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.

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

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.

"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.

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.

Are you saying our state offers both RealID and none RealID driver’s licenses?

> 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.

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?

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.

> 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.

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.

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"

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?

"government issued voter-ID"

Gasp! Checking for IDs while voting is fascist! It's like Germany 1937.

> 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.

Exactly zero states give you real IDs for free.

And my fingerprints too, but I don't have to be a willing participant.

Does facial recognition work better with one photo or many?

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

But it's something they're choosing to do, not something that is required.