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TSA Bans Flight If You Refuse To Show ID
mytrip notes a CNet blog entry on the recent TSA rule change banning flight to anyone who refuses to produce ID. It's OK if you claim to have lost or forgotten your ID — you undergo a pat-down and hand search of your carry-on bag and you're on your way. The new rule goes into effect June 21. "The change of rules seems to be a pretty obvious case of security theater. Real terrorists do not refuse to show ID. They claim to have lost their ID, or they use a fake. TSA's new rules only protect us from a non-existent breed of terrorists who are unable to lie."
I've always wondered about why people don't seem to get that fake IDs can be used for more than just getting into bars. And in that, far more serious things. I had my own experience with having to provide an ID in a case where it was not needed or useful to them. I bought an account with Hostgator once and they had a policy of not allowing you to use a shell account without providing a faxed copy of your driver's license. I argued with the system administrator there that it was a useless policy as it doesn't prove anything as IDs can be faked. And especially with the low quality of a fax, how could they tell. I could easily put in fake details using any simple image editor. He actually responded saying something like "If I can prevent one security breach, then the policy is worth it.". He didn't seem to get that it won't stop anything. Hackers see policies as obstacles to get over, not impassable walls. What's sad is that Hostgator isn't the only company with this very same policy. They probably don't realize how many malicious hackers they already have one their systems.
All that IDs provide is another hoop for everyone to jump through, including hackers and terrorists. They are useless as a security measure to anyone who doesn't have the authority to validate them.
After all, not one of the 9/11 hijackers had validly issued ID in their own names. Right?
Yeah. Maybe the next president will do something to fix the utterly idiotic "security" games the TSA insists on playing with airline travel. I'm not putting money on it, though.
What I find amusing is that you refer to the people creating these policies as "we". Like you've got any say in it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Also, an update from the Bush administration: We are not at war with Oceania. We have never been at war with Oceania. Miniplenty has upped the quality of their cigarettes this year by 30%, and has doubled our chocolate output! Hail, Big Brother!
Fuck DHS and the TSA. Fuck them and the horse they rode in on. They're far worse (if they aren't yet, they will be, just wait) than any terrorist ever could be.
Sad part is, I'd move to another country if I knew of any better ones out there. Anyone know of a mostly English-speaking country that doesn't walk all over its citizens' rights? I know the UK is right out, and I hear Australia is pretty bad too.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
pushing down people that irritate them.
As pointed out, since you can lie easily, this is really just about control and dominance.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Assuming all of those new laws and policies are for the "terrorists". That's why they don't make sense to you. NOW SHOW US YOUR PAPERS!
[emphasis mine]
So... refusing to identify yourself at the airport is equivalent to refusing to identify yourself when you're arrested.
Let's stop piddlefucking around and admit that planes are now airborne maximum security prisons. Because that's exactly how their "security" is treating passengers.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
When Conservatives constantly pule about government being the problem, they are close to right: conservatives in government is the problem.
Considering all their core principles are right out of Mein Kampf... developments like this are hardly surprising. Warrantless wiretaps, secret prisons, citizens being held in secret and without trials: brought to you by either Nazi Germany or Conservative America. Take your pick.
In any big bueracracy, specifically government, there's really little incentive to be more efficient (or even more correct). Particularly with government, like the TSA, this is an example of people trying to secure jobs for themselves and their department.
This can happen in the corporate world, too: feeling the need to spend one's entire budget just so that it won't get cut in the following year. But at least there's likely to be someone who might find and correct that inefficiency. In government, there's incentive to keep it growing all the way up to the top.
So the next time you see some policy that doesn't make sense, think about who just got to keep their job because of its existence.
--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics!
Only if you're an asshole and "refuse" to show your ID? Come on, how many people are really like that? If you're going to claim this policy for security reasons, don't allow an exception for "lost" or "forgotten" IDs. If it were for security reasons, ID would be required 100% of the time. Because it's for fascist reasons, they are willing to make a temporary exception to ease people into it. But, the 100% refusal to allow boarding without ID is coming. Mark my words. The time for action is now. I think I will somehow "forget" my ID every time I board a flight from now on.
bash: rtfm: command not found
There are thousands of people who get paid to make us safer from terrorists. I don't think they will be reducing the perceived risk any time soon. Announcements like this keep the terrorist threat in the news and make it look like they are doing something for their money.
It's about covering their asses.
It won't prevent a big screw up, *BUT* in case of big screw up, they can show up the fax, and ask their phone company to confirm they actually did receive a faxed document (and didn't fake it quickly in MS-Paint which would be about the same quality) and thus claim "see, we did our part, we're innocent, you can't sue us". I've always wondered about why people don't seem to get that fake IDs can be used for more than just getting into bars. And in that, far more serious things. Fake IDs are a little bit more difficult to fake with good enough quality to pass strong security check. I'm saying it's impossible - there's a whole black market to contradict such claims. I'm just saying that making a fake passport that could get one through customs at a time when a country is in paranoid mode and enforce strict control of everything, isn't within the technical skill of the US teen with the black marked and/or color printer wanting to get drunk and quickly shows a faked student ID or driver license to a pusher in a badly lit entrance. (specially given the fact that the pusher will hardly even be able to recognised the hundreds of different IDs issued by all different universities and states - at least on problem less with unique IDs).
But apart from that, I agree with you. An ID is not a magical bullet that will solve everything, specially not security.
Mainly, it's just a quick tool to quickly assessing the identity and age of the bearer, when convenience of speed is important and implications of misidentification are low.
(A teen passing out on booze isn't very likely to kill hundreds of thousands of victims. As of that matters, neither are terrorists. Natural catastrophe, on the other hand... )
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
You can't get a boarding pass without showing your physical photo ID (at least in the US, where TSA has jurisdiction). So how did you "lose" your ID from the point where you checked in and picked up your boarding pass, and the point where you got to the metal detectors and security checkpoints?
I call bogus on this. If this was really for security reasons, a photo ID would be required 100% of the time.
Security theatre indeed.
Let's take the downward trend of the overall airline experience and extrapolate. We'll examine the state of airline travel in ten years. All of the following has been verified for accuracy by traveling to the future.
In ten years, this is what it will be like to travel across the country by airplane:
First, you'll buy your ticket online for prices starting at $1400 or so, plus a $200 security fee tacked on for every flight segment. This is for each direction; there will no longer be "round trip" fares. All fares will be nonrefundable and nontransferable, and being late for your flight means automatic forfeiture of your fare and ticket, as there will no longer be an option to wait "on standby" for another flight or to change your ticket if your plans change.
When you show up at the airport, the first thing that happens is that you're put through one of two processes. Most people will go through a general process, which will be as follows: You get in line at the check-in, where you are questioned as to where you live, where you work, where you're flying, the purpose of your flight, what you're carrying in your luggage and on your person, whether you've purchased any electronics in the past six years, including electronics that you're not bringing on board with you, how much you paid for them, and why. During this time you will present ID and be photographed and fingerprinted; these will be input into the agent's laptop, which will immediately search through a government computer network of known terrorists, known criminals, known fugitives, people who are delinquent on child support payments, people who owe taxes, people who have been arrested in the last five years (even if not charged or convicted), people who are on the sex offender registry, people who haven't showed up to jury duty, people with bad credit, people who didn't register with the Selective Service System, people of other than Mexican origin who are in the country illegally, or people with unpaid parking tickets on their record. A match on one or more of these results in your being taken to a special room for additional questioning. There will be many false positives, so you'll wait in line for hours before being admitted into the interrogation room. This will mean that you'll probably miss your flight without a refund of your fare and with no compensation or rights whatsoever. If, by some miracle, you are seen in the interrogation room before your flight takes off, you'll miss it due to the length of the questioning process.
If you were not pulled out of the check-in line for interrogation, you go to the next step, which is to be weighed; at this point, you'll pay a dollar for each pound that you and your luggage weigh, plus $100 for each piece of luggage, $50 for your carry-on, and $25 for your personal item that you'll bring on board. Checking in will be free, but to obtain your boarding pass, you'll have to pay a $10 printing fee. The routing labels placed on your luggage will cost $5 each, and tags to put on your bag with your name and address will be a dollar each.
Now it's time for security, which happens in several stages. First, you'll bring your checked luggage to the TSA luggage scanner, where they'll pile up bags for flights that are about to take off somewhere on the side while scanning and pushing through the bags going on flights that aren't taking off for another two hours. One out of every ten bags will be chosen randomly and moved to a holding area where it will be held for a month and then returned to the airport, which will try and search for the owner, a process that will be extremely backlogged and won't succeed very often due to shoddy record keeping. Of those bags that are not randomly selected, each bag will be scanned electronically, and following that, each bag will be opened to wrinkle up the clothing. Then the bag will be passed on to the baggage handlers, who according to the 2013 Airport Security Passenger Luggage Contents Protection and Loss Prevention Act will be required to produce proof of
McCain/Palin '08. Now THAT's hope and change!
that refuse to go along with the pack and surrender all of their rights when asked in a confident voice by an authority figure.
Bingo. They could not have made the intention any more transparent. It's not about security - otherwise why is pat-down good enough for people who just make up an excuse? It's about control and making the population submissive. We learn to bend over at the airport and it makes it easier to do it at the checkpoint, the federal building, the state border, or while jogging in a neighborhood in which they think you don't belong.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
How many times do I have to point out the obvious? This sort of eroding of civil liberties is precisely the mechanism by which terrorism seeks to overturn governments. And the sickening part is that these same governments are entirely complicit in this mass upheaval of basic democratic--nay, human--rights.
Put yourself in the terrorist's shoes. Compared to the state, you are vastly underfunded, have no legal recourse, and are entirely disenfranchised. What hope do you have of taking down an entity that is far more well-established than you? Of course, your only option is to subvert it by attacking the citizenry. The government's response is to enact more and more restrictions to "protect" the people, until one finds themselves living under a police state. Of course, the attacks haven't stopped--but now the people are either going to revolt, or the economy is going to collapse, or the government has become the real terrorists.
And the government is complicit because they believe that a fearful populace is one that is most controllable. It is not in their interest to educate the people to think for themselves and question authority--they ARE the authority.
History has shown us time and time again that it is not difficult to overthrow kingdoms, republics, dictatorships, or democracies. All it takes is an idea one is willing to die for. The so-called "war on terrorism" is not successfully fought with weapons, nor with diplomacy. It is fought with knowledge. It is for that reason that the United States is losing to a group of fanatics.
...but it will catch the real enemy of this administration and of the tsa - folks willing to think for themselves and unwilling to be scared into submitting to big brother.
i already take off my shoes at the airport. and, because my job requires me to fly quite a bit and get where i'm going, i produce id (passport, usually). and every time i take the baggie with my toothpaste and travel-size deodorant out of my carry-on, i throw up in my mouth a little bit.
but i keep doing it.
because i have to pay the mortgage.
i can't remember who said this, but someone once said the 20th/21st century equivalent to the nazi war criminals' "i was just following orders" line will be "well, i had a mortgage to pay"...
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Most airline employees can refuse to check you in if you donot have an ID. What good does not showing an ID to a TSA employee do unless you lose your ID between checkin and boarding ?
The government knows exactly how much I make. People can look me up on line and see where I live, and how much I paid for my house. Credit companies know if I am late paying my bills. My credit card company knows what kind of purchases I make, and calls me if I do something unusual. Amazon knows what kind of books I read. Netflix knows what kind of movies I watch. In my county, you can look up my name on line and see if I have an outstanding traffic ticket. So you think I am going to get excited about my "privacy" if I have to show an ID?
The whole purpose is for the TSA to make the traveller feel that they are being kept safe. Real safety has nothing to do with it.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Isn't it weird? Conservatives don't have a problem with the government invading their personal lives, but they DO have a problem with the government invading the corporations' lives.
What a classic set of liberal distortions!
Conservatives, for the most part, do not want the government to enter our lives. However, we value the following rights as tantamount to freedom: a) free speech, b) freedom of commerce, c) the right to hold property and d) the right to get income from the investment of that property. That is why, as a rule, you will see conservatives balk at any sort of proposed rule about what kind of car, house, medicine, or anything else that a person might own or buy.
Conversely, the liberal would legislate the federal right to ALL property, and impose regulations on ANYTHING. Liberals always complain about "conservative fascism", but, then, their solutions always involve creating ever more regulation (and thus, devaluing property). Liberals might make you free in the Khmer Rouge sense of the word, but, ultimately, they make you poor.
In the free market state you Americans idolize, corporations and citizens should have the same treatment under the eye of the law. No more, no less.
Actually, we view corporations as distinctly less than the rights of citizens. However, corporations, via our shares, are our property, and therefor, we resist what the government would do with it. But, make no bones about it, in the eyes of a conservative, owning a stake in Exxon Mobil, or even the entire company, is no different than the legality of owning a pencil. It is my company, my pencil, and I can do with it what I will.
This is my sig.
From the movie Southland Tales why does interstate travel require a visa? Because this is 2008, in a timeline where three years earlier terrorists set off two nuclear bombs in Texas, bringing the War On Terror to American soil and precipitating World War III.
International travel has become more restricting to some past decade and pretty soon United States seem to be becoming to require Southland Tales style interstate visa. At least starting from foreigners, i fear. Unless i drive my own car, big brothers can track where i am from the records i leave behind, such as using airline, train, rental car around states. as soon as it becomes very efficient and cost effective to construct such data base, or Big brothers may have already began to contruct such system in order to track "terrorists". Travel visas to another country where it is required are not too difficult to get. It basically comes with your ticket from tour company. Asking for VISA is basically asking people to prepare the legal papers that show purpose of visit to the gov'nt even if you are well known in the area(even high ranking officers, celebrities are required). Requiring some kind of ID is much cheaper than to track down everybody's life. In North Korea, you are required permission to travel to the shop down the alley from the government. someday, US govn't probaly don't even need those from spying everything around us.
When I was in school ( oh so long ago ), we were told that America was better than the Soviet Union because we were free.
... and here we are:
"The Soviets don't let you travel without paperwork - we would never do that because we are a free nation."
"The Soviets tell everyone that the restrictions are 'for their protection', but it is a lie."
"The Soviets distort the news which is reported to the people."
Fast forward 25 years
Being shaken down for "papers" and "inspected" by the powers that be when we travel (air, auto, borders) or sign up to do an honest day's work.
All while living under an administration which distorts information as a matter of policy, supporting war with lies.
Not only that but we are losing out economically to a nation which is officially Communist.
So what did we win in the "cold war", exactly ?
I'd move away, but that would be allowing them to win.
Lets make THEM move away and get on with the business of restoring our nation !
Lurking in the desert
that refuse to go along with the pack and surrender all of their rights when asked in a confident voice by an authority figure.
Bingo. They could not have made the intention any more transparent. It's not about security - otherwise why is pat-down good enough for people who just make up an excuse? It's about control and making the population submissive. We learn to bend over at the airport and it makes it easier to do it at the checkpoint, the federal building, the state border, or while jogging in a neighborhood in which they think you don't belong.
I don't get it. When someone says, "May I see your ID, sir" and I show it to them, am I suddenly under their control? Have I suddenly lost the right to... I don't know.. speak freely when I show ID? People all over the world have had to show ID (passport) to travel from country to country. How is this different?I'm sorry, I can't keep up that charade any more. If you lose all self control because someone asks you for ID, you are fucking idiot and you shouldn't be leaving your town anyway.
Seriously, WHAT CONSTITUTION RIGHT IS INFRINGED ON BY HAVING TO SHOW ID?
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
I've flown without ID since 9/11, and it hasn't been a hassle before, and it won't be now. You just tell the TSA employee manning the metal detector line that you don't have any form of photo ID, they look at you funny, sometimes make a snide remark, pat you down, search your carry ons, and then let you go.
All of the airport ID checks are security theater, not just this recent change in regulation. Identity in very few cases conveys any sense of risk. If I know that a guy is named John Smith, and he's REALLY REALLY named John Smith, that doesn't tell me a damn thing about whether or not he's going to blow up a plane, or stab a flight attendant, or do whatever else gets to the Allah Virgin Merit Badge nowadays. Identity is only useful when you can correlate a person to a threat level. The "No Fly" list is, I guess, supposed to be a way to make that correlation, but it's obvious that it's a failure, and really, it'd be near impossible to create any kind of database that made ID-based security features meaningful without a far greater level of privacy invasion than the average citizen is used to, because it's not just enough to compile a list of bad guys, you have to compile another list of guys that are A-OK.
But you wanted your name on your post, so you had to log in. IOW, you had to identify yourself
I stole this sig from someone cleverer than me.
See where I'm going with the this? If the Fourth applies to ID here, then it has to apply EVERYWHERE!
Now, I understand that we don't want federal police officers asking us for ID at every corner. (Not that they don't have better things to do) I think it has something to do with the fact that you wanting to travel makes it reasonable.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Absolutely not. By asking this question, you've demonstrated that you're ALREADY under their control.
And as far as what constitutional rights have been violated, you are ignorant and misunderstanding the bill of rights. The bill of rights is not an enumeration of what rights you have - it's merely a list of a few of your rights that the framers thought so important as to merit special mention.
In fact, some were against a bill of rights for the very reason that they felt that the ignorant would see them as your only rights. As a compromise, the ninth amendment was added to make sure people understood this fact:
Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
As you have demonstrated, it didn't fucking work.
This space available.
Yes. After 9/11, nobody is going to sit back and wait while the hijackers "take this plane to Cuba". Anybody tries anything funny, like light their shoelaces, and if the passengers don't kill them, they'll get duct-taped to their seat for the remainder of the flight.
Meanwhile, the terrorists are looking for a weak spot. Someplace where law enforcement has overlooked. If we take some responsibility for our own security, there won't be any weak spots, regardless of TSA oversights.
Have gnu, will travel.
In fact, some were against a bill of rights for the very reason that they felt that the ignorant would see them as your only rights. As a compromise, the ninth amendment was added to make sure people understood this fact:
Ninth Amendment - Protection of rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
As you have demonstrated, it didn't fucking work. First, the Bill or Rights states what government may NOT do to you. "Congress shall make no law..." or "...shall not be infringed"
Next, um, while I'm no Constitutional scholar, I'm pretty sure that the Ninth Amendment doesn't mean translate to "Everything not mentioned here is also a right".
You could have made a more convincing case by going with Amendment X, anyway.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Why do they need fake IDs? The 9/11 guys didn't. Are we meant to imagine that the government has subsequently identified every potential terrorist and an alarm will go off if any of them present their ID?
I think there are two things at work.
First, this is meant to remove the doubt over whether it is okay to travel without papers. Can't have trouble makers of the Samuel Adams stripe running around asserting their rights.
Second, the law enforcement mentality is predicated on the infantile presumption that fear of punishment is what prevents people from committing crimes. Once someone decides they don't give a damn (or, worse, that they want publicity) law enforcement is lost.
I weep for my species.
-Peter
Oh, give me a break. This isn't that hard to understand; even you can handle it:
They won't let you fly if you say "I don't want to show ID". They will let you fly if you say, "I forgot my ID". That won't stop a single bad guy ever. It doesn't solve any problem at all even a little bit, except for people expressing opinions the TSA doesn't like.
Yes, you are free to turn around and walk away. Which means you are voluntarily accepting a more limited existence than other people, a more limited freedom of movement.
And when they require ID to get on trains, you'll be more limited still - but you'll be OK with that.
And not for safety - the 9/11 hijackers all had valid ID. No, you're willing to submit to demands of authority that increase safety and security not one bit... and in fact may decrease them, by instilling a false sense of security, by creating a bottleneck of massed passengers (a wonderful terrorist target), by diverting resources that could be better used...
You're willing to do that, to let authority tell you what to do just for show, to let authority make useless demands throughout your everyday routine... why?
Why? Maybe you just don't want to feel like one of those dirty hippies always talking about "rights" and "freedom" and such? Maybe you think authority is something to be admired and respected? Maybe you just want to be a good German?
This space available.
There's actually a good reason for asking that question. It's a knowledge-based verification, to try to catch someone who might pickpocket a passport off someone else in line. It's not a foolproof security measure, but if you happened to see someone who looks like you in line and swipe their passport it might be difficult to memorize their birthday and their prior itinerary in the few minutes you have before you're next in line (if you try to steal it earlier your theft is less likely to go unnoticed). On the other hand, you'll surely remember your own birthday, nationality, and whether or not you've been to a given country, so the questions cause minimal inconvenience to those going through immigration.
"TSA's new rules only protect us from a non-existent breed of terrorists who are unable to lie."
This is silly and misses the point. They protect us from something far more dangerous to the regime: People who refuse to have their rights flushed away.
You have it backwards. Asking what right they're violating is looking at it from the wrong angle. Instead ask what part of the Constitution authorizes them to require ID for travel. Remember, if it's not in the Constitution, they can't do it.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
If you're talking about optimizing the process, it takes absolutely NO TIME to NOT check id cards.
I remember when the ID requirements were just to keep people from selling each other unused tickets on the cheap.
Technology -- No Place For Wimps! Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia Chatroom -- http://www.wemissjerry.org
There is a difference.
Where we are heading is closer to National Socialism than Comunisim.
I am trying to be careful with my phrasing because I am being serious, and trying NOT to trigger Godwin's law.
Here is what makes "terrorism" interesting. Terrorism on its own is close to harmless. The Spain bombings, 9/11, the London bombings... all of those bombings didn't even dent those nations. Even 9/11 was just a drop in the bucket. 4000 or so people dying in the US? It won't even register as a blip on US death rates for a year. A couple of knocked over towers? Those are a little costly, but they pale in comparison to even a minor hurricane.
The terrorist attack itself was a pin prick against a giant. The problem is that the giant in response decided to saw off its own hand to keep from ever being pricked again.
While the attack itself did minimal economic damage and a barely noticeable effect on the number of people living and dying in the US (especially next to such terrors as cancer or heart disease), our response to it did horrible.
I am not even pointing to the government response alone. The government did terrible damage to itself by implementing policies that make business harder, travel harder, and importing students and skilled laborers harder. Lets not even considered the more intangible damage done to civil liberties. Even worse, people's own reactions turned a minor disaster into a major disaster. Being terrified of airplanes despite the fact that you are vastly more likely to be struck dead in a car did terrible economic damage. Fear that lead to reduced spending did horrible economic damage.
My point is this. Terrorist are hardly worth mentioning for the acts that they commit. They rank far FAR below other dangers that are likely to kill you. McDonald's and swimming pools kill far more people than terrorist do in the US. Cars kill vastly more people, and yet we manage to soldier on in utter indifference. The only thing that hurts about a terrorist attack is our very own response. If we want to defend against terrorist attacks in the future, prevention isn't the answer. Snatching low hanging fruit, like reinforcing plane doors and telling passengers to kick the shit out of anyone trying to get into the cockpit is fine and relatively cheap. Where the REAL savings would come from is if policy makers could find a way to dampen their own and the publics responses to terrorism. The damage is done when we react by chopping our own limbs off. If we could find a way to not react so violently, terrorist attacks, while hardly a good thing, would be FAR less destructive.
The real reason behind it is the national ID program. First they require an ID, then they will alter it to require the national id or passport. This is how they plan to get around the states that refuse to comply with the national id act.
The policy actually protects us from the scariest class of person known to man. A sovereign person of a country with rights, a constitution, and a presumed right of movement, access, and liberty.
Nothing is more scary to a police state, an overreaching government, or a bureaucracy, who's sole purpose is to expand and justify themselves despite any evidence, experience, or theory, to the contrary.
Hmmm... [all the terrorists invest in green tunics, pointed ears, magic bows, and (reading another comment) portable windows]
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?