The funny thing is this "requirement" got pushed back nearly 20 years and still isn't actually required, but if they set this fee in 2008 it would've been done in 2008. In America you don't get it done by requiring it, you get it done by making it cost more if you don't do it.
ID should be something the government provides to everyone "for free" (for taxes already paid, by all taxpayers).
That way anyone and everyone should be expected to have an ID and depriving someone of that ID or their use of real ID could be made a crime similar to unlawful detainment.
What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely? Do other countries have similar problems?
The system is interesting that the 2 branches of government responsible for doing things are often in a state of open conflict and the main job requirement of the judiciary seems to be an ability to maliciously misinterpret the law in a way which most benefits the group who appointed them.
It helps that this one was entirely pointless except for generating more contracts to hand to pals, like a lot of the stuff around that time—say, when they created Homeland Security rather than just beefing up existing structures that served similar purposes (easier to direct contracts to friends and companies you own large stakes in when you’re setting up a totally new department with an excuse to get all-new everything!)
Like this doesn’t actually matter, at all, for security purposes. Which is why nobody’s cared enough to make it go faster.
> What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely?
For this specific regulation, it's illegal to prevent someone who passes physical security screening and has paid their fare from boarding a plane.
So, if FedGov didn't provide a mechanism that they could point to that technically doesn't require passengers to present ID to board domestic fights, then they're still technically compliant with the law.
That's why TSA hasn't been able to just say "Fuck you, you don't get to fly if you don't have a federally-issued internal passport.".
In this case the problem is that the fed is the one who runs the TSA and created the Real ID rules, but the states are the ones that actually issue the IDs meeting those rules. The fed couldn't force the states to implement the rules and the states didn't want to spend money on something they didn't really care about.
Of course, they didn't really care about it because it's mostly just security theater and thus the fed was never going to start turning people away simply for not having a compliant ID (which is still true). If there were much more valid reasons for why everybody needs to have a Real ID then states would have put more effort into getting everybody to have one.
There's also the separate the issue that the Real ID rules are questionable and it's not always easy for someone to get a Real ID even if they want one.
In this particular case, it's because Americans have somewhat unusual deep-seated distrust of our own government, which has lead to pretty well-organized opposition to any federally mandated form of identification. Officially, the only two real semi-universal lists of American citizens available to the federal government are A) Social Security numbers (which aren't ID, they're just a unique identifier, and aren't legally mandated, just incentivized), and B) The Selective Service Registry, which IS legally mandated, but only for fighting age men. (Fun fact: this is why American men still need to register for the draft, despite the US not having a draft since Vietnam. This registration does not suggest that the US is any closer to re-instating the draft than any other country that eliminated their draft, as it would still take an act of congress, just as most countries can reinstate their draft with an act of parliament. The reason we have to register is that officially, the federal government otherwise has no idea who is even eligible to be drafted).
> What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely? Do other countries have similar problems?
Well, it’s a big country that is really kind of like 50 different smaller countries that do a lot of important things in a common manner but also do a lot of other things in very different ways. It’s hard to get all 50 states to move in the same direction.
It basically is required, because without it they're treating you the same as if you showed up to the airport with no ID at all.
There's a manual verification process that has always existed for people who lost their ID before their flight, it used to be free, now you need to do that and pay $45 for it.
Requiring it would get it done, they just haven’t actually required it. They said it was required, but in reality you can still get through without one, with some additional screening. No surprise that this has not been very effective.
Because it's not just a $45 fee and you're on your way.
You can actually board a domestic flight without any ID at all, for example if you lost it before your trip. But you'll have to go through a manual identity verification process. That includes giving fingerprints and answering personal questions only you should know, like past addresses.
It takes around 30 minutes and if you don't answer correctly, you could be denied boarding. This process already existed before the Real ID requirement, but it used to be free. Now, you're forced to go through the same manual verification steps and pay $45 on top of it.
You're being treated the same as if you have no ID with you at all.
If it’s like the identity verification services the CRAs offer, I’ve managed to fail one of those enough times that they said I’m not me and stopped letting me try (to be fair, it was only two tries IIRC).
The last attempt I even had my report from the relevant CRA in front of me as a cheat-sheet, at their suggestion. They believed I’m me enough to hand me (a version of) my report and let me into my online account with them, but not enough to tell someone else that I’m me. Go figure.
(The trouble, I’m pretty sure, was that both times I encountered two “I have literally no idea what relevance any of the addresses you named have to me” answers and I think they only put one of those in each set. Even reading the sheet I never managed to figure out WTF they were talking about. One I got both times, which I suppose was the one I was supposed to know, didn’t even name a state I had lived or owned property in. But nothing about it on the report, so what do I dispute? Luckily I only needed it for a temporary rental and that ended up working out fine—it’s way easier to buy houses than rent one, I guess, which is pretty weird)
TIL. I have always wondered how much pain you have to bear if you lose your ID on a (domestic) trip. Thought it was legitimately possible you might have to take a bus cross country.
I’ve gone through this process before and while it was more work it did not take 30 minutes.
I presented a student ID and was escorted through the security line. My baggage was selected for additional screening and I received a pat down search.
I went through an identical procedure on the return flight, right down to the exact words the TSA agent spoke to me while conducting the pat down.
A few years ago i forgot my id, i boarded my departure flight with my costco card and the return flight with my sams club card. both had pictures and my full name. to top it off, I was escorted right past everyone in line by security. it was great!
What is amazing is that a couple of weeks ago it was $18[0]. Yet what is really cooking my noodle is that the live site referenced from that post now says $45 [1]. Yet, if you check the waybackmachine the original article in fact said $18[2].
> the new fee is intended to encourage travelers to obtain the ID.
They're flat out telling you it's not about safety. It's merely about forcing total compliance. Which is almost certainly why the price was raised.
The real question is, since this is apparently also required to enter any federal facility, can I pay the $45 fee to enter those location as well? If not, then it's obvious what they're doing here.
It’s been a requirement forever and the truth is that many of the requirements were actually implemented by the stays decades ago for all ids and they keep pushing it back every year.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic. It’s actually gracious of them to offer an alternative.
>It’s actually gracious of them to offer an alternative.
I strongly disagree. 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.
That's not "gracious," that's coercive.
Edit: Fixed incorrect usage ("they'd" vs. "they").
At least you have something. In France you cannot fly without an id.
Identity cards are free and you cannot really live without, you need to other your identity quite often. Sure, there are some convoluted ways to avoid that but it is a road paved with pain.
It is like the ability to make z handwritten cheque. It is clearly described in the law but I wrote me to meet someone who wrote accept such a document. I guess the bank itself would be stunned.
Is this the better Id system everyones been asking for?
In many countries a declaration that you have no id card will be met with a blank stare by most people. In the UK it's one of the most politically toxic ideas imaginable. So extra points to the Starmer government for making it exponentially worse by proposing it be mandatory AND digital. We already have cheap passports, licenses and national insurance numbers, so i cannot think of a single way this measure will improve our lives. A consideration which is completely alien to Starmer and co, who can't understand why people are so stupid to prefer the "fascist" narrative over theirs.
This is just the drivers license with I think slightly more photographing or background checking, and in a different database? And a fancy star hologram.
Someone jump in if I've missed a crucial detail, but I don't think it's comparable to the digital ID thing of pulling in disparate systems or being easily scanned from an app or what have you.
It's just an ID, like a driver's license can also be considered as "just an ID".
But previously: The individual States all issued IDs themselves. They each made up their own rules about who could and could not get one. They didn't necessarily share this information with the federal government, and citizenship wasn't necessarily a requirement at all to get a state ID such as a driver's license.
But Real ID is not that. It broadly requires proof of citizenship[1] or lawful status in order to obtain one.
So, for example: As a native-born US citizen, that's a new requirement for me -- nothing else I've ever done in life has required me to prove my citizenship. I've had a state-issued driver's license for decades. I've had mortgages, paid taxes, and lead a fairly productive life without citizenship status ever being a concern. But I don't presently have enough documentation to prove the citizenship that I've always had, so no flying for me (for now -- I'll have to get that sorted sooner or later).
At least in California, it also requires one to present significantly more documentation. Last I checked, it also goes into a central Federal database, whereas ordinary State-issued IDs do not.
If I'm going to get a damn passport, I'm going to get a passport that lets me leave the country.
Background for the uninitiated: the USA is not quite a real country. It's 50 states that agreed to cooperate in various ways, and share a common army/navy.
While the US government issues documents that work for identification everywhere (called passports) approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.
So when planes began to be attacked by bad guys some decades ago, the aviation industry (regulated at the federal level, because it doesn't take long to fly out of the state you start in) decided to use the identification document that everyone does have: the drivers license.
But those are issued by the states, not the federal government.
And the states don't all do a great job of the surveillance state stuff, so it's pretty easy for a budding Mr Terrorist to get a drivers license, and for his state to not bother keeping much in the way of records to find him if he ever hijacks a plane.
The solution to this falls under the category of the US "trying everything before they get it right" -- the federal government (via congress) decided that only drivers licenses issued by states that get the surveillance stuff right to their satisfaction would be usable to get on a plane (passport always worked and still works, fwiw).
Some states said "ok, that's fine". Some states said "nope, not doing it".
<insert years of wrangling>
The final solution was that the "not doin it" states were told they could issue two kinds of drivers license (real-id and...un-real-id).
Since you have to explicitly request a real-id license in those states, which costs more, and because people are lazy and ill-informed, there are still people with no valid id document to get on a plane.
So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let them on the plane. Oh...wait, no, the solution is to charge them $45.
> So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let [people who have in their possession a government-issued ID] on the plane.
Some of us still remember how internal checkpoints and the demands for government-issued traveling papers were used in some countries to restrict the travel of and collect persons of interest. The fact that we didn't go "Papers, please!" to folks traveling within the country was once a point of pride. You're suggesting that everyone who wishes to cross the country in less than a week must be in possession of Federal identification papers. [0] You do understand that it's totally legal to have zero identifying documentation other than your boarding pass, right?
Exactly one thing prevented (and prevents) another 9/11: reinforced cockpit doors that lock from inside the cockpit. Everything else that has been done is extremely expensive theater that wastes our time and energy, and empowers authoritarians.
[0] Ubiquitous computerized systems and internetworking means that traveling papers no longer need to be handed out to the traveler. If someone's either of interest or banned there's no need to notify them, you can just snatch them up at (or turn them away from) the checkpoint.
And, like, I want to mention here that the hijackers who successfully wrecked three airliners and murdered everyone on board (including themselves) passed all security screening. We knew who they were! If we had had internal passports in 2001, that would have changed nothing at all.
AIUI, these folks were armed with box cutters and a willingness to kill themselves, everyone on the plane, and everyone in the building they intended to crash into. Folks regularly get knives through TSA screening. There have been numerous official reports about the fact that TSA failed to find > 90% of the weapons and explosives federal red-team employees put into their luggage.
The only thing that has stopped another 9/11 is reinforced cockpit doors that lock from inside the cockpit. Had the cockpit doors been solid and locked, those hijackers would have gotten the shit beaten out of them by passengers and those planes would have made safe emergency landings.
It was closer to being true (though I’d still not have characterized it as “approximate nobody”) when you didn’t need passports for travel to Canada, Mexico, and IIRC many Caribbean cruises. That change increased rates of passport-having a ton.
I am not sure if I get the surveillance state angle here. The airline already have a passenger register, so unless you lie on the registration then the plane will have log of the travel. The airline do not offer a way to fly anonymously.
Two decades ago in my country there was also two form of ID/passports existing at the same time. The old one and the new one which had bio-metric data and a computer chip. The new did create a new privacy issue in that you had to give away bio-metric data which the old one did not have. Is that what we are talking about for real vs unreal id?
That is close. They hold a bit less info because it is for internal US use only. Its also about the required documentation to have one issued. Also, the reason many countries went biometric at the same time 2 decades ago is because the US absolutely insisted.
The funny thing is this "requirement" got pushed back nearly 20 years and still isn't actually required, but if they set this fee in 2008 it would've been done in 2008. In America you don't get it done by requiring it, you get it done by making it cost more if you don't do it.
ID should be something the government provides to everyone "for free" (for taxes already paid, by all taxpayers).
That way anyone and everyone should be expected to have an ID and depriving someone of that ID or their use of real ID could be made a crime similar to unlawful detainment.
What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely? Do other countries have similar problems?
The system is interesting that the 2 branches of government responsible for doing things are often in a state of open conflict and the main job requirement of the judiciary seems to be an ability to maliciously misinterpret the law in a way which most benefits the group who appointed them.
It helps that this one was entirely pointless except for generating more contracts to hand to pals, like a lot of the stuff around that time—say, when they created Homeland Security rather than just beefing up existing structures that served similar purposes (easier to direct contracts to friends and companies you own large stakes in when you’re setting up a totally new department with an excuse to get all-new everything!)
Like this doesn’t actually matter, at all, for security purposes. Which is why nobody’s cared enough to make it go faster.
> What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely?
For this specific regulation, it's illegal to prevent someone who passes physical security screening and has paid their fare from boarding a plane.
So, if FedGov didn't provide a mechanism that they could point to that technically doesn't require passengers to present ID to board domestic fights, then they're still technically compliant with the law.
That's why TSA hasn't been able to just say "Fuck you, you don't get to fly if you don't have a federally-issued internal passport.".
2 replies →
In this case the problem is that the fed is the one who runs the TSA and created the Real ID rules, but the states are the ones that actually issue the IDs meeting those rules. The fed couldn't force the states to implement the rules and the states didn't want to spend money on something they didn't really care about.
Of course, they didn't really care about it because it's mostly just security theater and thus the fed was never going to start turning people away simply for not having a compliant ID (which is still true). If there were much more valid reasons for why everybody needs to have a Real ID then states would have put more effort into getting everybody to have one.
There's also the separate the issue that the Real ID rules are questionable and it's not always easy for someone to get a Real ID even if they want one.
In this particular case, it's because Americans have somewhat unusual deep-seated distrust of our own government, which has lead to pretty well-organized opposition to any federally mandated form of identification. Officially, the only two real semi-universal lists of American citizens available to the federal government are A) Social Security numbers (which aren't ID, they're just a unique identifier, and aren't legally mandated, just incentivized), and B) The Selective Service Registry, which IS legally mandated, but only for fighting age men. (Fun fact: this is why American men still need to register for the draft, despite the US not having a draft since Vietnam. This registration does not suggest that the US is any closer to re-instating the draft than any other country that eliminated their draft, as it would still take an act of congress, just as most countries can reinstate their draft with an act of parliament. The reason we have to register is that officially, the federal government otherwise has no idea who is even eligible to be drafted).
> What is it with America and laws being pushed off indefinitely? Do other countries have similar problems?
Well, it’s a big country that is really kind of like 50 different smaller countries that do a lot of important things in a common manner but also do a lot of other things in very different ways. It’s hard to get all 50 states to move in the same direction.
There's 50 governments responsible for implementing this law. A few more I guess. Not 2 branches.
We have categorically lost our ability to change or enforce laws, and so while congress may pass a law, the followthrough is usually nonexistent
It basically is required, because without it they're treating you the same as if you showed up to the airport with no ID at all.
There's a manual verification process that has always existed for people who lost their ID before their flight, it used to be free, now you need to do that and pay $45 for it.
Requiring it would get it done, they just haven’t actually required it. They said it was required, but in reality you can still get through without one, with some additional screening. No surprise that this has not been very effective.
Instead in many states it cost more for the REAL ID
I'm to believe this is done for my safety, which is apparently worth $45
Because it's not just a $45 fee and you're on your way.
You can actually board a domestic flight without any ID at all, for example if you lost it before your trip. But you'll have to go through a manual identity verification process. That includes giving fingerprints and answering personal questions only you should know, like past addresses.
It takes around 30 minutes and if you don't answer correctly, you could be denied boarding. This process already existed before the Real ID requirement, but it used to be free. Now, you're forced to go through the same manual verification steps and pay $45 on top of it.
You're being treated the same as if you have no ID with you at all.
If it’s like the identity verification services the CRAs offer, I’ve managed to fail one of those enough times that they said I’m not me and stopped letting me try (to be fair, it was only two tries IIRC).
The last attempt I even had my report from the relevant CRA in front of me as a cheat-sheet, at their suggestion. They believed I’m me enough to hand me (a version of) my report and let me into my online account with them, but not enough to tell someone else that I’m me. Go figure.
(The trouble, I’m pretty sure, was that both times I encountered two “I have literally no idea what relevance any of the addresses you named have to me” answers and I think they only put one of those in each set. Even reading the sheet I never managed to figure out WTF they were talking about. One I got both times, which I suppose was the one I was supposed to know, didn’t even name a state I had lived or owned property in. But nothing about it on the report, so what do I dispute? Luckily I only needed it for a temporary rental and that ended up working out fine—it’s way easier to buy houses than rent one, I guess, which is pretty weird)
1 reply →
TIL. I have always wondered how much pain you have to bear if you lose your ID on a (domestic) trip. Thought it was legitimately possible you might have to take a bus cross country.
I’ve gone through this process before and while it was more work it did not take 30 minutes.
I presented a student ID and was escorted through the security line. My baggage was selected for additional screening and I received a pat down search.
I went through an identical procedure on the return flight, right down to the exact words the TSA agent spoke to me while conducting the pat down.
1 reply →
A few years ago i forgot my id, i boarded my departure flight with my costco card and the return flight with my sams club card. both had pictures and my full name. to top it off, I was escorted right past everyone in line by security. it was great!
1 reply →
I didn't have to have any biometrics taken, just answered a bunch of questions. Flew out of Las Vegas.
What is amazing is that a couple of weeks ago it was $18[0]. Yet what is really cooking my noodle is that the live site referenced from that post now says $45 [1]. Yet, if you check the waybackmachine the original article in fact said $18[2].
[0] http://archive.today/2025.11.21-221013/https://www.washingto...
The important thing is that, like the tariffs, this is not a tax on Americans.
3 replies →
> the new fee is intended to encourage travelers to obtain the ID.
They're flat out telling you it's not about safety. It's merely about forcing total compliance. Which is almost certainly why the price was raised.
The real question is, since this is apparently also required to enter any federal facility, can I pay the $45 fee to enter those location as well? If not, then it's obvious what they're doing here.
Do we still have to take off our shoes, if I'm paying $45, I'm not taking off my shoes
They actually stopped that policy in summer this year.
It’s been a requirement forever and the truth is that many of the requirements were actually implemented by the stays decades ago for all ids and they keep pushing it back every year.
It’s hard to feel sympathetic. It’s actually gracious of them to offer an alternative.
>It’s actually gracious of them to offer an alternative.
I strongly disagree. 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.
That's not "gracious," that's coercive.
Edit: Fixed incorrect usage ("they'd" vs. "they").
At least you have something. In France you cannot fly without an id.
Identity cards are free and you cannot really live without, you need to other your identity quite often. Sure, there are some convoluted ways to avoid that but it is a road paved with pain.
It is like the ability to make z handwritten cheque. It is clearly described in the law but I wrote me to meet someone who wrote accept such a document. I guess the bank itself would be stunned.
Just use your passport!
When you get a passport, get a Passport ID (wallet card) as well.
It can be used to purchase alcohol and enter 21+ clubs — but cannot be scanned and doesn't have your address listed upon it.
Okay, and what about the other half of Americans?
Is this the better Id system everyones been asking for?
In many countries a declaration that you have no id card will be met with a blank stare by most people. In the UK it's one of the most politically toxic ideas imaginable. So extra points to the Starmer government for making it exponentially worse by proposing it be mandatory AND digital. We already have cheap passports, licenses and national insurance numbers, so i cannot think of a single way this measure will improve our lives. A consideration which is completely alien to Starmer and co, who can't understand why people are so stupid to prefer the "fascist" narrative over theirs.
This is just the drivers license with I think slightly more photographing or background checking, and in a different database? And a fancy star hologram.
Someone jump in if I've missed a crucial detail, but I don't think it's comparable to the digital ID thing of pulling in disparate systems or being easily scanned from an app or what have you.
It's just an ID, like a driver's license can also be considered as "just an ID".
But previously: The individual States all issued IDs themselves. They each made up their own rules about who could and could not get one. They didn't necessarily share this information with the federal government, and citizenship wasn't necessarily a requirement at all to get a state ID such as a driver's license.
But Real ID is not that. It broadly requires proof of citizenship[1] or lawful status in order to obtain one.
So, for example: As a native-born US citizen, that's a new requirement for me -- nothing else I've ever done in life has required me to prove my citizenship. I've had a state-issued driver's license for decades. I've had mortgages, paid taxes, and lead a fairly productive life without citizenship status ever being a concern. But I don't presently have enough documentation to prove the citizenship that I've always had, so no flying for me (for now -- I'll have to get that sorted sooner or later).
[1]: There are some exceptions. https://www.tsa.gov/real-id/real-id-faqs
3 replies →
At least in California, it also requires one to present significantly more documentation. Last I checked, it also goes into a central Federal database, whereas ordinary State-issued IDs do not.
If I'm going to get a damn passport, I'm going to get a passport that lets me leave the country.
3 replies →
As far as I know this is correct. It’s similar to what’s required to get a passport.
If you already have a passport, no verification is required.
My guess is that it harmonizes federal and state records for identifying individuals.
4 replies →
Varies by country. [1] Europe, even within the Schengen zone, is split on this.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_national_identity_card...
Background for the uninitiated: the USA is not quite a real country. It's 50 states that agreed to cooperate in various ways, and share a common army/navy.
While the US government issues documents that work for identification everywhere (called passports) approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.
So when planes began to be attacked by bad guys some decades ago, the aviation industry (regulated at the federal level, because it doesn't take long to fly out of the state you start in) decided to use the identification document that everyone does have: the drivers license.
But those are issued by the states, not the federal government.
And the states don't all do a great job of the surveillance state stuff, so it's pretty easy for a budding Mr Terrorist to get a drivers license, and for his state to not bother keeping much in the way of records to find him if he ever hijacks a plane.
The solution to this falls under the category of the US "trying everything before they get it right" -- the federal government (via congress) decided that only drivers licenses issued by states that get the surveillance stuff right to their satisfaction would be usable to get on a plane (passport always worked and still works, fwiw).
Some states said "ok, that's fine". Some states said "nope, not doing it". <insert years of wrangling> The final solution was that the "not doin it" states were told they could issue two kinds of drivers license (real-id and...un-real-id).
Since you have to explicitly request a real-id license in those states, which costs more, and because people are lazy and ill-informed, there are still people with no valid id document to get on a plane.
So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let them on the plane. Oh...wait, no, the solution is to charge them $45.
> So now we get to the present day where the solution to that problem is to not let [people who have in their possession a government-issued ID] on the plane.
Some of us still remember how internal checkpoints and the demands for government-issued traveling papers were used in some countries to restrict the travel of and collect persons of interest. The fact that we didn't go "Papers, please!" to folks traveling within the country was once a point of pride. You're suggesting that everyone who wishes to cross the country in less than a week must be in possession of Federal identification papers. [0] You do understand that it's totally legal to have zero identifying documentation other than your boarding pass, right?
Exactly one thing prevented (and prevents) another 9/11: reinforced cockpit doors that lock from inside the cockpit. Everything else that has been done is extremely expensive theater that wastes our time and energy, and empowers authoritarians.
[0] Ubiquitous computerized systems and internetworking means that traveling papers no longer need to be handed out to the traveler. If someone's either of interest or banned there's no need to notify them, you can just snatch them up at (or turn them away from) the checkpoint.
And, like, I want to mention here that the hijackers who successfully wrecked three airliners and murdered everyone on board (including themselves) passed all security screening. We knew who they were! If we had had internal passports in 2001, that would have changed nothing at all.
AIUI, these folks were armed with box cutters and a willingness to kill themselves, everyone on the plane, and everyone in the building they intended to crash into. Folks regularly get knives through TSA screening. There have been numerous official reports about the fact that TSA failed to find > 90% of the weapons and explosives federal red-team employees put into their luggage.
The only thing that has stopped another 9/11 is reinforced cockpit doors that lock from inside the cockpit. Had the cockpit doors been solid and locked, those hijackers would have gotten the shit beaten out of them by passengers and those planes would have made safe emergency landings.
1 reply →
> approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.
This isn't true. Over half of US citizens have passports https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/about-us/reports-...
It was closer to being true (though I’d still not have characterized it as “approximate nobody”) when you didn’t need passports for travel to Canada, Mexico, and IIRC many Caribbean cruises. That change increased rates of passport-having a ton.
1 reply →
Because Canada and Mexico and the Caribbean Islands require them.
I am not sure if I get the surveillance state angle here. The airline already have a passenger register, so unless you lie on the registration then the plane will have log of the travel. The airline do not offer a way to fly anonymously.
Two decades ago in my country there was also two form of ID/passports existing at the same time. The old one and the new one which had bio-metric data and a computer chip. The new did create a new privacy issue in that you had to give away bio-metric data which the old one did not have. Is that what we are talking about for real vs unreal id?
That is close. They hold a bit less info because it is for internal US use only. Its also about the required documentation to have one issued. Also, the reason many countries went biometric at the same time 2 decades ago is because the US absolutely insisted.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biometric_passport
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_ID_Act
Sounds great to me actually. I’m glad the states still have the leverage to do this.
> approximately nobody living in the US actually has a passport.
Hilariously untrue.
Almost absolutely everything you said is not true.
I almost get the sense you aren't a US citizen.