The TSA's former position was that you can willfully decline to provide them with identification and be permitted to fly with the selectee designation.
Right. It seems that at that time, verbally identifying yourself wasn't useful, and presenting credentials simply got you through with a walk through the magnetometer instead of a frisk, and an X-ray search of your bags instead of a hand-search of them. That's what happened the dozen or so times I flew without showing ID credentials before mid-2008.
The TSA's current position is that you cannot willfully decline to provide them with identification and be permitted to fly; if you lose or for some other reason so not have your ID on you, then they will work with you and attempt to verify your identity by other means.
Maybe. Do blog posts and press releases constitute notification of a government agency's official position? Since they publish conflicting information, relying on one particular announcement seems rather unwise. The latest authoritative source I've seen was the
SOP manual provided to the Identity Project in May of 2009 (and dated June 30, 2008, a week after the date that their policy reportedly changed). As I
quoted above, they found that "Rather than requiring people who don’t have or don’t choose to show government-issued ID credentials to execute affidavits stating who they are under penalty of perjury, the TSA procedures manual requires that such people be allowed to proceed through secondary screening as “selectees”, and specifically directs screeners and other TSA staff not to make any attempt to detain or delay them."
I've since requested a copy of their screening management operating procedures manual under FOIA, and they've
stalled for over a year.
So while there's plenty of hearsay, we don't really know what their policy is. It would be nice if people would test the system, hopefully documenting their experience with photo and video.
I have not seen anyone except you (so far) make a serious argument that the TSA's current policy still allows one to willfully decline to present ID and still fly. (In fact, the TSA website explicitly says exactly the contrary).
I didn't intend to make that argument. I asked TSA staff who are participating in this discussion to explain, but none of them has done so.
May I ask what you believe the TSA's current position/rules/policies to be on this issue?
I don't know. I would guess that their policy is similar to that which was described in the June, 2008, press release, but we know for sure that this was not the case a week later (unless they violated FOIA when providing that procedures manual).Until they publish their rules and policies, we can only guess.
And remember that positions, rules, and policies are all different. The only credible information about this I've seen was the description of their operating procedures, not rules. Quoting that IDP announcement again: "These are “procedures”, mind you. Not policies. Not regulations. Not laws. Congress has never debated or approved any of this, nor has any judge or jury. The excerpts from the TSA manual that we received gave little hint of how much “discretion” the TSA thinks it has, or gives its minions at individual airports or checkpoints, to use “nonstandard” procedures if they feel like it."