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.

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autoexec 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> 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

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Fhch6HQ 2 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

	▲	FireBeyond 31 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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ehasbrouck 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

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."

	▲	Fhch6HQ an hour ago \| parent [-]
		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.

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Forgeties79 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

“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.

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crazygringo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

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.

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rubyn00bie 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

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.

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crazygringo 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> 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.

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rubyn00bie 3 hours ago | parent [-]

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...

	▲	Fhch6HQ an hour ago \| parent \| next [-]
		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.
	▲	crazygringo 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		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.

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Forgeties79 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

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/