Flying Faster Without ID

jjh37997 writes "A Homeland Security's privacy advisory committee member finds that flying without a photo ID is actually faster than traveling with proper identification. According to Wired the committee member, Jim Harper, accepted a bet from civil liberties rabble-rouser John Gilmore to test whether he could actually fly without showing identification. He found that traveling without ID allowed him to bypass the long security lines at San Francisco's International Airport, and get in faster than if he had provided his driver's license."

Comments

The real problem is getting your boarding pass

[frzndrag]

The problem is not in getting through the TSA checkpoint it is getting your boarding pass from the airline.
He just proved you can get through the TSA checkpoint with a valid boarding pass without an ID.
If you do not have ID and try to checkin for your flight at the airline desk you will get what John Gilmore got in the article - a refusal from the airline to give you your ticket.

Re:If everyone did what he did

[erroneus]

That's pretty true... but most people simply do what's expected of them and/or whatever the signs say to do.

In response to people claiming, "that works for white people... but what about the rest of us?" I say "bullshit!" I was TSA and frankly, as much as many people would LIKE to be able to do profiling, there is so much going on to discourage it (at least at DFW airport) that I feel VERY confident in asserting that it doesn't matter if you're Arab. I recall working at a checkpoint when a man of Arab decent was delayed slightly while people frantically made phone calls in a back office. This guy was on the "No-Fly-List" and they were attempting to clear him through the FBI or whatever federal agency. Ultimately, either they cleared him or they couldn't reach anyone who knew what to do with this case. Some 15 minutes later, I saw him bowing and praying on a rug that he brought with him facing in the direction I presume must be Mecca...on the SECURE side of the airport. They let him through anyway.

As I was leaving the TSA, "No ID" flyers were becoming more and more common to the point that the procedure as described in the article sounds about accurate. So yes, everything is screened in the fullest allowable detail. But frankly, there isn't enough manpower to handle everyone like that.

If everyone learned this trick, they'd have to change the way they do things or hire more people or both.

Now that said, my experience is that the longer part of the line is outside of the "corral" area. The entrance of the corral is where the ID checker is... and that ID checker is an AIRLINE employee, not government. So if you want to play that game, be sure that the line before the corral is shorter or non-existant. Otherwise, before the ID checker, you're still waiting in line for quite some time.

SFO experence

[zakezuke]

In all fairness, I forgot to renew my license till I needed to travel to Mexico, and as it turns out my state now mails out photo IDs and give you a temporary laser printed copy. The "only" issue I had with this was the security checkpoint at SFO.

Guard - "How did you copy this" the secuirty check station guard asked
Me- "It's not a copy"
Guard - "I can't let you through, this is expired"
Me - "No, it's not expired, I just renewed it"
Guard - "This looks like a photo copy"
Me - "If you take the time to read it it says temporary. California does the same thing if you renew out of state. You staple the paper renewal to the expired plastic. If you have questions, call this number below".

Now, to be fair, I do understand how a laser printed license does look suspicious. But spending time in cali I also know your average liquor store has on hand a book of respective licenses, what they should look like, and even pictures of ones that fall apart easily (Washington). This leads me to believe at least in California liquor is more secure than airports.

Re:Here's a scenario to show that you're wrong.

[beoswulf]

"So, if I'm a terrorist ... and I look like I'm a terrorist ... I just find a white girl-friend who is the opposite of your "profile" and I pack her carry-on baggage with my weapons. Without her knowledge."

That's already been done. It's why profiling doesn't work. And I'm not middle eastern, I'm of pasty Irish ancestry. I could pass as a danish. /rimshot

"In 1986, Nezar Hindawi, a Jordanian national then residing in Britain, told his pregnant Irish girlfriend to fly to Israel from London and that he would meet her there via Jordan. Before she boarded the El Al jumbo jet in London, it was discovered by airport security that the false bottom of her hand luggage concealed a bomb powerful enough to blow the jumbo jet out of the sky. She told authorities that the hand luggage was a gift from her fiancé Nezar Hindawi and that she could not believe that he would knowingly endanger her or his own unborn child. When Hindawi was arrested he revealed that he was a paid agent for Syria and claimed that he had been specifically instructed by Syria to romance and then impregnate a naive woman who could be utilized as a completely unwitting human bomb and thereby more likely avoid detection by airport security (who then operated according to standardized terrorist profiles). So convincing was the evidence of Syria's hand behind this attempt to obliterate a civilian passenger plane that Britain suspended diplomatic relations with Syria for a number of years thereafter."

More: http://www.bearpit.net/lofiversion/index.php/t2727 .html

Re:Lucky Him

[tm2b]

Actually, you'll probably find yourself under suspicion at a smaller airfield. Small airfields are like small towns, except more so: everyone knows everyone else.

That's a common rejoinder, but it's knee-jerk. That's only my experience at the very small airfields (like the one I used to fly out of, 3FD1, before it was closed to be sold as strip mall real estate). The medium sized ones, large enough to handle some passenger jet traffic but small enough to handle a lot o general aviation, usually have next to no security. I've seen them all across the country, from Florida to California and all points in between (I usually fly the southern route, via El Paso). My range in my PA180 is about 400 nm, so I see a whole lot of 'em (it was still difficult two months ago to get hotel rooms in Louisiana and Alabama, by the way, thanks to FEMA overbooking).

And if I've flown into the field, well, then I have access to everything - my airplane is my passport. Never mind that I could easily have stolen it from one of a dozen unmanned fields across the south of the country that I could pull out of my log book.

Let's look at Austin as a concrete example - it's a regular overnight stop for me as I have friends there. Half of the field is international-rated airline traffic with all of the bells and whistles. The other half is GA. In order to get on to the GA half of the field in my rental car, all I have to do is ring a buzzer next to the gate at the high-end FBO. Sometimes a voice will come on and ask me for my tail number (clearly visible from off the field) before opening the gate - sometimes the gate will just open. Funny, they don't try to X-Ray and explosive-sniff the car.

At the county-owned field in Florida I fly out of, there is simply no security after 6pm. The gates are left open and anybody can come and go. I had $10,000 of avionics stolen out of my airplane one night, and my A&P had a King Air have a couple hundred gallons of AvGas siphoned out of it just after Katrina. My insurance company tells me that this is not at all uncommon (thankfully, they paid up with barely a blink - much to my surprise).

At best, security is highly variable - there are tons of fields that an attacker could cherry pick access to. I'm confident that anybody who's been in the GA world for more than a few months could easily plan to access a passenger airliner without being challenged. And don't get me started on cargo jets...