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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."
Good thing he's white.
...I know people like to think that it's now so much more secure; but if you don't "look like a terrorist" (which usually means of middle eastern origin) you can get through pretty quick. I went from England to holland and never had to show anything but the colour of my passport (which is bugandy - the English colour) and the fact that I am white and middle class. That was all they cared about. I know a lot of people won't like that the world sometimes works like this (I don't), and I'm expecting people won't want to hear it either...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
Is saving 5 minutes in line REALLY worth the full cavity search????
... you woudln't save any time. Honestly, putting your items through the X-ray machine and stepping through the magnetic scanner is quicker than the near-body-cavity search they gave him. If everyone opted to do it just to save from showing ID's (whether an ideological move or a time-saving one) then the time-savers would be going back to the X-ray lines ...
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.
If you're travelling with kids, then yes.
From the article: There Harper was directed into the belly of a General Electric EntryScan puffer machine that shot bits of air at his suit in order to see if he had been handling explosives.
TSA employees wearing baby blue surgical gloves then swiped his Sidekick and his laptop for traces of explosives and searched through his carry-on, while a supervisor took his ticket, conferred with other employees and made a phone call.
I wonder how many people it would take to DOS that procedure?
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
How does proving that I'm me make anybody any safer?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I've done a variant of this with customs as well. When you come back into the U.S. you must clear customs. This involves standing a HUGE line, usually for an hour or so. There are only 4 or 5 stations open at LAX normally. The trick is to bring a small plant back with you. When you get to customs you tell the guy you have a plant and aren't sure if it's allowed. They send you over to another guy who only handles these sorts of things and has no one in his line.. He looks up your plant and searches you bags. If the plant is allowed in(never happens) you keep it and walk right out. If the plant isn't allowed he takes it and you walk right out. Total time maybe 5 minutes. Works every time.
There was a reporter watching and taking notes as he was searched by the TSA. I wonder how he would have fared if he were alone?
Apparently if I fly naked I'll save enough time to get there before I leave.
My name is on the No Fly list. I wont be trying this. I show ID and I still get put in that same line he went through.
Last year, he tried to board an airplane... without showing an ID, and without submitting to a secondary search.
He was carrying only his boarding pass and a copy of the U.S. Constitution. Cheeky fucker!
He spent several days in jail, and got some really scary letters from the FBI (hi guys!).
Scanned copies of the letters, photos of the event, and his own musing are posted here.
Now, I don't agree with Russell's focus on "civil disobediance" -- I prefer to focus on political change (ie, getting good people elected into office, passing good laws, repealing bad ones, etc). In addition, I think this particular act of Civil Disobedience was poorly chosen -- he was trying to make the point that it should be the airlines, not the government, that sets the rules for any particular flight.
But still, ya gotta admire the sheer cojones of standing up to the FBI, and doing it with a sense of humor (see the letters he wrote back to the Feds, they're hilarious!)
Russ is just one of the hundreds of pro-Liberty activists out here in New Hampshire, one more member of the Free State Project
Part of the Second American Revolution!
Back before 9/11, I flew into London from Denmark, and was leaving the country the next day for the states. Hadn't bought much so customs wouldn't be a problem. But, they have a "red line", and a "green line" - red for "I have something to declare (and pay tax on)". The red line was empty aside from a few people watching and profiling those walking through. The green line was forever long, and I was tired. So, off I went, up the red line, right to the counter. "Well, I have this sweater that I bought in Norway for (number) Norwegian Kronur, which works out to about (number) Pounds. I'm leaving for the US tomorrow, not sure if I need to pay something on this or not?"
I pretty much already knew the answer (no as long as you're not planning to sell it here), but by going up through the shorter line and having a plausible reason for doing so, I was able to save an hour. So yeah, you can get some time savings doing this sort of thing. Not sure I'd go for the body cavity search route to save waiting in the ID line, though. I guess that depends on if it's a business trip, or a recreational one.
This proove the old adage that the world is not driven by reality but by the perception of reality.
I would argue that no one in their right minds would try to highjack an airplane again. In the past highjacking was a political statement. Usually the highjackers would fly the plane to a neutral airport and make demands. Often this would include the release of fellow members of their organization who were incarcerated. If you were an unlucky passenger, you would be an unfortuante pawn in a global chess-game. (Obviously there were exceptions.)
After the terrorist attacks on 11 Sept. 2001, no passenger will sit still and let a highjacker take over an airplane. Highjacking is now synonomous with suicide attacks. In my opinion, the real danger to airline travel comes not from highjackers but from explosives being placed on the airplane, e.g. Pan Am flight 103.
But the perception in the US is that flying needs to be protected, so the result is the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Others have pointed out that if you are not white, have any kind of middle eastern origins, and you try to fly without an ID, you're pretty much screwed. And because the TSA has near absolute authority about whether or not you fly, they can deny you boarding simply because they feel like it.
The result of all this is that flying, IMO, is not significantly safer than before. We are concentrating our resources on "fighting the last battle." Making sure passengers have proper Identification doesn't make flying any safer. One could point out that some of the highjackers on 11 Sept. 2001 had valid IDs, after all they entered the country legally. As a society we should concentrate our efforts on preventing bombings or other bomb like devices. The "shoe bomber" Richard Reid in late 2001 probably represents a greater threat, yet checking to make sure he has proper identification isn't going to help.
I would argue that the checks they do at airports to check for explosives are worthwhile. But making sure you have an ID with you are not.
But white people did not fly planes into the WTC and Pentagon. You can be sure that if they had, the ACLU wouldn't be standing up for the white people getting profiled at airports.
Of course, this doesn't mean their aren't white terrorists. Clearly, they exist and could strike at anytime.
Many people have made the comment that he had no problem because he was white. Although playing the race card is pretty ignorant, I see no mention of the race of the TSA workers that let this guy through so easily. For the white conspiracy to work, every TSA employee had to have been white.
I'll tell ya, my wife works for the government and most of our friends do as well. I grew up around government workers. Most of them hate the government, especially when the GOP is in control. The government would never get away with most of the conspiracies attributed to them. Yes, they routinely make bad "official" descisions, but they are rarely carried out in any effective manner. Most government workers have the "union" attitude. They go to work and do their job however they feel like, because it's impossible to get fired. If some TSA supervisor told a bunch of grumpy TSA peons to go profile certain types of people, I wouldn't count on them giving two squirts. If any of them thought there was some systemic conspiracy going on, they'd be on the phone to the media in a flash.
I know people want the government to be the bigbadevilsuper-entity, but it really isn't. When you see inside, it's amazing that we survive as a country at all. It would be amusing if it weren't so disturbing.
So what: a well-dressed polite white man gets through a shorter (yet more thorough) security line because of a lack of ID. First, the airlines have to account for people not having IDs. Wallets get stolen, IDs are lost or forgotten, in other words, shit happens. Second, this lack of ID is a rare occurence so of course the line will be shorter, and even if the actual screening takes 3-4 times as long than the "normal" screening you will get through faster.
Incidentally, a little politeness can go a long way when dealing with government workers, especially in places like an airport or the DMV. Just think: these people deal with complaining a**holes all day for crappy pay, you might actually make their day a little brighter by being polite, or, God forbid, almost friendly. The time for civil disobedience in not after waiting 2 hours in the DMV line.
Oh boohoo...you get searched every now and then at the airport. When I was in my 20s, we (if we were hip looking, ie had long hair) used to get beaten up on a regular basis...now those were hard days of real government oppression...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
Two recent TSA experiences: 1) Going from Wash DC Reagan to Ft Laud. Have a Swiss Army Knife (the classic, little tiny one with scissors, file blade and tweezers) on my keyring. Did not realize I had carried it on the plane out of Reagan until I was going through security at Ft Laud and they caught the knife on x-ray and made me either surrender it or exit security, check it in my bag which I was going to carry on, and go back through. 2) Like a dumbass let my driver's license expire (still have FL license, live in DC with no car) 3 days before needing to fly, again out of Reagan. My passport was also expired, so that left me with no current gov't issued photo IDs. At the security line, the lady checking boarding passes and IDs caught that my license was expired, wrote NO ID on my pass, sent me to another line, put me through a puffer machine, x-ray, and then I got the bag search with the little swatches they stick in the machine to check for explosives. I thought I was going to have to talk my way through, but nope. I had my Social Security card and birth certificate with me and they weren't even interested.
Is this intended as a favorable or pejorative description of John Gilmore?
If John Gilmore is a rabble-rouser, then in my opinion the USA needs more rabble-rousers. If we had 100 million of them, the politicians would never have dared take away all our rights.
The real reason for requiring ID to fly is for security... of the airlines' financial bottom line. You see, when ID is required, tickets cannot be exchanged or resold. Thus, all tickets are now non-refundable, unless you want to pay $1000 for them. So if you can't fly on the ticketed date and want to send someone else instead, too bad.
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.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I tried this out last year for an international flight from Vancouver to LA. I wouldn't recomend it.
As a bit of background, my license had just expired and I was in the process of getting a new one. I checked the law ahead of time and discovered that for a Canadian citizen to travel to and from America via land, sea or air the only identification that you *need* is a birth certificate. Picture ID is strongly encouraged. A Passport is an even better idea.
I got stopped at just about every possible interval on the trip - checking my bags, passing through security, getting through customs, getting on the plane, getting back through customs when I landed - by people that apparently had no understanding of the law.
Every single person insisted that I could not travel without a Driver's license. Flashing the yellow sheet of paper that passes as a temp license in BC didn't get me very far. I even had to ask the customs official to ask their manager to look up the information. Neither one of them knew what was going on.
It is possible to do these trips without proper identification, but it's such a pain in the neck it's not really worth it.
So, if I'm a terrorist
I get massive sympathy from her because I always get searched and "harrassed" by the "authorities".
Once we're in the air, I have access to her carry-on.
Any "profile" you setup can be defeated.
He was arrested when he jumped out of the box at his mother's house after the delivery guy dropped him off - and the delivery guy SPOTTED him getting OUT of the box!
Feel safer now, folks?
Lee Darrow, Chicago
/*and if you aren't comfortable with that find a side road.*/
Which, given the fact that it was Bakersfield, may have been impossible to do. In that case, the safest thing to do would be drive at a comfortable speed and stay in the right lane.
We all know what to do, but we don't know how to get re-elected once we have done it
Next time you're in the middle of a 40 car pileup on the freeway, tell that to the EMT cutting you out of your car.
I tried to use that excuse to get out of a speeding ticket and even chatted with a couple of my civil engineering buddies at the state transportation department. After that chat, I gave up and pleaded guilty. The research doesn't back the "everybody else was doing it" defense.
-h-
Its going to the extremes. I live in India, and in the past few years airline security has always been tight because terrorism is very very old over here. So what was the security. No ID bullshit. You walk into a metal detecter. If it beeps you are frisked. They ask you to remove keys, wallet, cell phone and keep them separately. Simple 1 min process which happened parallely to your bag in the X-Ray. Heck if you are carrying a camera bag you could give it to them and tell please check it by hand as you dont want your films getting spoiled. Simple and effective. Infact so effective that inspite of the very real threat of terrorism(bomb blasts on streets etc., are common in some parts of the country), there was one hijacking after 1990, and that too from Nepal(A neighbouring country). So nothing wrong with the security measures over here. Now lets contrast that with the US. Before 9/11 you could walk upto the plane to see people off as if they are boarding a bus! And after that they make you remove your shoes and what not. If they really want to learn how to secure airports and prevent hijackings, visit Israel, India or any country which has borne the brunt of terrorism for so long.
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Next time you're in the middle of a 40 car pileup on the freeway, tell that to the EMT cutting you out of your car.
I don't stay in wolfpacks or drive too fast for conditions - if everyone else is then I take my own advice and take alternate routes. That's how you avoid having to be cut out of your car.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
He didnt say that its an acceptable defense, he said it was the safest thing to do. If everyone else is driving 100 and some jackass is in the middle of that driving 70, thats when a pileup happens and the EMT's actually need to show up. Imagine driving down a side road where everyone is going 30-40, and a car is just stopped the middle of the road. Yeah, problems.
You don't think that the TSA employee was intimidated into being kinder by the fact that there was a guy taking notes 5 feet away behind some plexiglass? By observing a thing, we also inherently change that thing. The test was completely invalidated by the presence of the reporter.
So I suspect that if everyone traveled without ID, today's TSA airport processes would fail big time.
What do you mean by 'fail'? Terrorists would take over a plane? Maybe nobody would be allowed to fly - bet the airlines would be keen on that scenario. If EVERYBODY defected business would go on as usual. No way the airline industry is going to stand for stopping large quantities of people from boarding planes.
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I didn't say that it was an acceptable defense either. That's why I didn't use it.
As an aside, you don't need to swipe your credit card at those e-ticket touchscreen kiosks.
Just touch the correct button & give the machine a bit, it'll kick over to the next screen without asking for your credit card. Punch in your confirmation # and you're good to go.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The test rate on screeners was 70 percent before 9/11 and remains 70 even after adding all the new standard proceedures. So what exactly is the benefit of standing around on a dirty, often wet floor in my socks?
Right. Keep thinking those happy thoughts. 100mph is too fast for conditions on roads in the US, particularly in traffic.
Actually I agree that 100MPH in mixed traffic is probably too fast (though if they are all modern cars with good tires and braking systems...)
However, drive out in Utah or Wyoming or Kansas some time. 100 MPH can be perfectly safe during the day if traffic is very sparse, because you have the visibility and thus lead time to safley drive that speed.
That is why in some states like Colorado, traffic accident rates fell after the speed limit was increased to 75 MPH because it brough the people trying to obey the law closer to the people driving at reasonable speeds for road and traffic conditions. It is a difference in speed that causes accidents, not generally absolute speed itself.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The sad truth is that in a situation where Arabs are a minority, and most terrorists are Arab (debate the truth of that if you like, but don't pretend the conclusion is invalid) you will statisitically have a better chance of finding terrorists if you search only Arabs. The reason we shouldn't do this, from a purely safety-oriented point-of-view is that we will guarantee that some terrorists do get through, we need a better way of searching. I don't think random checks are the best, but one possibility might be to determine what X percent of terrorists are Arab, and have X percent of your security watch them more, and have the rest watch everybody ELSE (i.e. the non-X percent of guards, etc. do not watch Arabs).
It would be great if your example were valid... but it doesn't hold up. "... you might argue that this does not reflect probabilities in the larger population, but... let me use this as an example, to make a mathematical pont." You aren't really making any point; your hypothetical sample is completely unrealistic. This is a real-world, not hypothetical, situation, and you must make arguments that are realistic. The chances of some 115 random people (in the US) including 100 Arabs is fatanstically low; generally speaking the chances that so many as 15 of them *are* Arab would be low. Similarly, you could easily go your entire life grabbing random groups of 15 non-Arabs without finding 2, let alone 5, terrorists in one group. So, while I agree with the point you are trying to make, I am worried that this is being held up as an 'insightful' argument on the topic.
It's a matter of percentages. I agree with essentially every post thus far that stated we shouldn't focus exclusively on Arabs, but your example is flawed, especially for US application.
There's no place I could be, since I've found Serenity...
I tried to use that excuse to get out of a speeding ticket and even chatted with a couple of my civil engineering buddies at the state transportation department. After that chat, I gave up and pleaded guilty. The research doesn't back the "everybody else was doing it" defense.
Then your civil engineering buddies are wrong. I was big into transportation when I was in college. I did more research on that topic than all my other subjects combined. I found books published by the state of Texas that said the *worst* following distance was 2 seconds. That's the following distance that guarantees the worst possible crash. At closer distances, the two cars strike with less force, even though they are both moving. At longer distances, the following car is slowing and the front car is stopped, lessening the impact.
And you'll never talk your way out of a ticket with the truth. It's better to be polite than explain. You'd ba hard pressed to come up with something that every rookie doesn't hear on his first week, and cops are lied to on a regular basis, so even if you are telling the truth and it is valid and reasonable, they will presume you are lying unless proven otherwise.
And, just so you know, more fatal car crashes involve someone traveling under the average speed than over the average speed. So, if you are at the average speed or a little above, you are statistically safer than those below the average speed. And, had you actually talked with competent engineers that worked on roads, they would have told you that going with the flow above the speed limit is *safer* than going the limit. The limits are supposed to be set at a speed above the average speed in the absence of limits. However, political pressures and practial reasons get them set below the engineering standards. The City of Dallas was found to be setting the limits so low that it violated state law. Real engineers (and not imaginary ones) would have gone on a rant about how the politicians muck up their proper engineering and don't follow the 85% rule, even when specified in state law.
So, care to try again and tell us about how all the "experts" think that traveling 55 on a road packed with everyone else going 80 mph is safer than going 80? The only "experts" that would say that are either worried that saying it will get them fired, or they are paid spokespeople for organizations with political motivations (often not "experts" except in their own minds - see Ralph Nader for an example).
Learn to love Alaska
Jim's a great guy. He came to New Hampshire to help us fight Real ID here.
3 976923577
He testified to help us pass an anti-RealID bill, which came within a hair of becoming law.
As I wrote in another post, see
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=830740502
for footage from a big protest against REAL ID here.
I had a long argument with NH Senator President Gatsas about the "id requirement" issue in flying and we (Jim and I) insisted he was wrong, that we could fly without any ID, if we were willing to submit to a secondary search. Kudos to Jim for proving us right!
(For those wondering what politics in New Hampshire is like... Yes, not only did I have an argument with the Senate President, but he called me back within 5 minutes of my sending him an email. We have that sort of an open and accessible legislature. Come and see it in action, there is nothing like it anywhere else. 400 State Representatives, 24 Senators, all paid a mere $100 a year, and little in the way of staff or offices.)
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