Three words: No Fly List

Your government and mine has created a secret blacklist of people so dangerous that they cannot get on a plane but who have not committed any crime and therefore cannot be arrested (or killed by drone strike) on the ground.

We live in a great nation, don't we?

(Yes, yes, we all know that it would be trivially easy to use a fake boarding pass and real ID to get around the no-fly list.)

(bolding mine)

In all fairness, do we even know what the criteria for being hit by a drone strike is now? You can be taken out without an arrest, extradition, or trial even if you are 16-years-old and related to a bad guy.

But don't most adults fly with an ID anyway? If you are driving to/from the airport, you need your driver's license, you might need it at the ticket counter, and you might need it if you make any credit card purchases during your trip. I'm not saying that you need to show the ID to TSA but that you likely would have some form of ID on you anyway.

Why does TSA check ID's at the gate?

Only reason that I can come up with is that TSA leadership doesn't trust TSA screeners to do their jobs the first time.

ID Checking serves no security function and is not part of a limited administrative search for WEI.

Two words for you: Make-work.

If the TSA has enough screeners that they can conduct ID checks at the gate, they need to reduce their staffing. I've never seen one of these ID checks. Do the screeners check the ID's against a list or anything? If they just look at the ID and hand it back, talk about a waste of money and resources. At least a random bag check has a slight, yet highly unlikely, chance of catching something dangerous.

Check ID's by looking.

Worthless evolution but that pretty well describes the whole of TSA.

There is nothing wrong with a one-size-fits-all approach to commercial air travel security. Everyone, including airline and TSA employees, should go through the same screening to access the sterile area. X-ray of belongings, walk through / hand held metal detector, explosive trace detection / explosive trace portal. Nothing more, nothing less.


Coming to a bus terminal near you…

TSA has partnered with local law enforcement to conduct thousands of VIPR missions from coast to coast across the U.S.



Welcome to FlyerTalk! :) That DL employee was out of line; please let DL know.

The only person outside of a LEO that will see my driver's license is a car rental employee. I'll show my passport card when carded for alcohol, the occasional merchant that wants to see ID, and of course the TSA Trained Document Checker.


At airports where I can't use a mobile boarding pass, I print out two copies of my boarding pass. The one that the TDCer scribbles on is placed in the garbage, usually the same one where all the bottles of dihydrogen monoxide are surrendered to at the checkpoint. :p

I'm looking forward to going through the same experience you did. My response to their query will be "Yeah, one of your your fellow employees made a bunch of marks on it, so I threw it away." :D

This week I put my Japanese driver's license back in my wallet. If they want to play silly buggers and delay my flight by "screening" at the gate then I'll screw with them right back and switch to Japanese for everything.

You probably have a set of keys with you and a pair of underpants. Is there a logical reason to check for these to board an airplane?

Logical? Why does that suddenly matter?

If the back of your credit card is properly signed, then requiring such would be a violation of their merchant agreement.

I am a merchant that accepts CC's. This is quite true. Some merchants will ask, but they can not require. Usually, the people at the register do not know this and even the manager may be unaware. I left $500 of stuff lying on the checkout of a local building supply when they refused my CC without ID.

How does that work then for hotels?

When they request to see an ID is it for the reservation or for the credit card?

In all fairness, I must point out that your examples, while legitimate and powerful from an emotional standpoint, are really extremely rare and not enough to back your argument that ID checks make us less safe.

BUt don't get me wrong - I am firmly in the "ID checks are unadulterated BS" camp. While the theoretical argument can be made that the ID check at the c/p has some potential security value, in that it is intended to prevent anyone from entering the sterile area who is not a ticketed passenger whose name has been run through the various Enemy of the State lists, there is absolutely no justification whatsoever to the gate ID checks.

I know all of this, and it burns me up when a merchant asks for ID, but so far I'm just to self-involved to point out to any merchant that the practice is in violation of the merchant agreement. Most of the time, the only people you could complain to are low-level employees - cashiers and managers - who don't set policy and cannot grant you an exception, so nothing changes and all you wind up doing is causing yourself and those behind you a delay.

Complaining to the CC company might be effective, however; I will start doing so in the future via the link ND provided.