Originally Posted by
jkhuggins
No ... you're missing one important aspect of a lie. You also have to know that you don't know what you're talking about.
When Ptolemy told everyone he knew that the Earth was at the center of the universe, and all the planets rotated around the Earth, was he lying? Of course not. He was just wrong. And nobody could convince him --- and his followers --- of the error of his ways for another 1400 years.
I'm not missing that aspect.
Purporting to know something that you don't know is not the same thing as being under a mistaken impression. It's a lie.
He didn't know what a Nexus card is. If he didn't know what a Nexus card is, then by definition he also doesn't know whether it's an approved, or "valid" as he called it, ID. If he had known what it was, he would also have known that it's an approved ID.
If he doesn't know what an ID is, he's supposed to check it in the book to see if it's approved.
Nexus cards are IDs issued by the governments of the US and Canada, are they not? This makes them valid, government-issued IDs, and they are on the list of IDs acceptable at TSA checkpoints for domestic travel, so he couldn't reject it out of hand as he would reject a privately-issued ID such as those I have from my credit union or the private firm which employs me. So he wasn't under a mistaken impression that it couldn't be used because it's not a government-issued ID.
I can accept that he may not have known what a Nexus card was, though I think that any TSO who is manning the TDC podium SHOULD be trained better, to know a wider variety of IDs on sight, than those working the x-ray scanners or AIT scanners or performing rubdowns. A TDC not knowing what the Nexus card is constitutes another agency shotcoming, not a personal one by the TDC.
But he didn't say he didn't know, and he didn't check until confronted by Ink. He said, "This is not a valid ID," even though he didn't know whether it was valid or not. He purported to know that it was NOT on the approved list, even though he had obviously never seen one before.
That's a lie, plain and simple. Whether it's a lie to cover up laziness (because he didn't want to check the book), or a lie to bully pax into using the preferred ID (drivers license), or just a lie to make the pax Respect His Authoritah! is beside the point. He said it wasn't "valid" even though he didn't know that it was or wasn't valid without checking the book.
He lied.