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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."
...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.
Well, white, "normal looking", and with signs of reasonable affluence.
As with all things, it helps to look sharp - whenever you find yourself in a potentially dodgy situation, stop and ask yourself, "how expensive of a lawyer do I look like I can afford?"
-Hentai [in vita non pacem est]
If you're travelling with kids, then yes.
I think this whole "white" thing is a little exaggerated. I'm orignally from Pakistan, look very middle eastern and travel through SFO all the time and have never been checked. Infact I travel all the time with my "white" British friend who has been checked thrice. He then got ticked off and shaved his beard :)
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.
Having a reporter watching the whole thing probably didn't hurt.
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.
I fail to see how the grandparent, which simply said "Good thing he's white" can be modded +5 insightful while this AC post, which actually provides a little bit of information (an anecdote, at least) can be modded 0. Looks to me like Slash has a little racism going on (or reverse racism, if you like - it's all the same shit to me).
;-)
If you read this, have mod points, and agree, please mod the parent up a bit instead of me.
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!
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.
Because, if everyone takes their ID on the plane, if Johnny Terrorist blows the plane up, then everyone can flap their ID cards really hard which will put the fire out, and also it'll just be like lots of little birds flapping their wings, so the plane will float down gently instead of crashing.
Also, if you are brown, carrying an ID card means you won't blow up the plane. And if you are white, carrying an ID card means you are not brown or a muslim, so you also will not blow up the plane.
Stick Men
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.
I had a similar incident happen to me...
I was pulled over for speeding (106mph in a 70mph zone). Since the ticket was for "Exceeding 100mph", it was a mandatory court appearance. I showed up in a dress shirt, nice slacks and a tie. I plead guilty, and was fined $600. I was driving a Mercedes (A 1979 Mercedes, which is pretty inexpensive), but I'm sure the judge thought that me driving the Mercedes meant I have money.
The guy behind me shows up, and was charged with doing 105 in a 70, in the same exact location as I was pulled over, on the same day, by the same officer, but about 20 minutes after I was pulled over. He was dressed in worn out jeans & a wife beater, and was driving a rental Mustang. His fine was $250.
I'm still pissed about that, but I kept my mouth shut since the judge didn't suspend my license, and I was afraid he would hold me in contempt of court.
The Bakersfield, Ca courtroom is making the state a ton of money. The day I was in court, there were about 45 people in there, all charged with exceeding 100mph. I would imagine that they are one of the largest contributors to Bakersfield's economy.
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.
Well, of course. It's very simple, most people are misunderstanding the purpose of airline security.
The purpose is not to stop terrorists. It's abundantly clear that the measures that have been taken are ineffective at doing so. The purpose of airline security is assure middle America that Something Is Being Done .
Towards that end, it's much more important that people who look "Middle American" appear to be given much more scrutiny, because they're the ones footing the bill - they have to be the ones to get the warm fuzzies and thereby get assurance that it's safe to fly.
If you want some idea of how completely absurd the whole thing is, try being a pilot (or just pretending to be one) at a smaller airfield (yes, that still services larger jets) and see how easy it is to access airplanes without a single challenge from anybody. At most, you'll be asked for the tail number of your aircraft - which you can read from the big freakin' characters on the side of every airplane.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
You make an interesting point, but it's wrong. Profiling based on race in fact is detrimental to security, because security officials concentrate on skin color as opposed to the behavior that actually indicates likilihood of being a terrorist -- nerviousness, shifting eyes, standing around in a corner, I don't know -- stuff like that. (My source is a professor on an NPR program I heard last August. I recall when I was listening to it, too, so if you really care I could probably track down who it was.)
How many terrorist attacks on airplanes have we had since September 11? What, the shoe bomber? That's a sample size of 1. And all the time we hear about the increasing threat of "home grown terrorists." Slashdot readers should know not to extrapolate from small data sets.
but the fact is that most of the terrorists are Arabs
Crap. Most of the terrorists I've had to worry about during my life have been Irish Catholics. Many of the terrorist attacks on US soil have been at the hands of white Christians. Racial profiling is bad because it doesn't work more than for any other reason.
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
OK, a brief mathematical point. If most Arabs are not terrorists, and most terrorists are Arabs, it does not follow that your highest probability of finding a terrorist will be by examining Arabs
I'll make a concrete example for you. Suppose you pick a group of people at random, and it happens to contain: 10 Arab Terrorists, 5 Non-Arab Terrorists, 90 Arab Non-Terrorists, and 10 Non-Arab Non-Terrorists. Now, 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.
In that situation, it is true that: Most Terrorists are Arabs. (10-to-5: among the terrorists, there are twice as many Arabs as Non-Arabs.)
In that situation, it is also true that: Most Arabs are NOT Terrorists. (90-to-10: among the Arabs, there are 9 times as many non-Terrorists as there are Terrorists.)
However, now look at the probabilities: If you examine Arabs only, your chances of finding a terrorist are 10% (there are 100 Arabs in the sample, 10 of them are terrorists). On the other hand, if you examine Non-Arabs only, your chances are finding a terrorist are 33% (there are 15 Non-Arabs, 5 of them are Terrorists).
I know these numbers seem skewed, but I want to make a mathematical point: just because most Terrorists are Arabs DOES NOT mean that you are more likely to find a terrorist by searching Arabs.
"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."
/rimshot
7 .html
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.
"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/t272
Fines are dangerous to use as a law-enforcement tool, for just this reason. As soon as you give governments a financial incentive to punish people, you start getting "enforcement" that happens for reasons completely unrelated to wanting to protect the public.
I've always thought that the right solution to this is to reduce that governmental body's tax income by exactly as much money as it takes in in fines. This way the government has no financial incentive one way or the other, and will presumably only pass and enforce laws when they're actually in the interest of the community. And those fines would reduce the tax burden on the supposedly-harmed society, reimbursing the citizens who had been transgressed against in the most direct possible way.
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...
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
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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