Or it's time to admit what the rest of the world already knows: it doesn't matter who you are - if your bags and your person have been cleared, you are no threat to aviation safety. The ID check and the RealID have more to do with government oversight of citizens and kickbacks from the contractors who are benefitting from forcing people to get a RealID.

Either identity is a crucial component of aviation safety or it isn't. There's no middle ground, and it's appalling that TSA gives the breaks to the people who least deserve it while doubling down on folks who are guilty of nothing more than wanting to get on an airplane.

I'm sure you're aware of this by now, but I'll answer it anyway. The airline checks your name against the no-fly database, and then the TSA makes sure that the name on your ticket, which was checked against the database, is actually the name of the person getting on the plane.

TSA definitely plays probabilities. The best example is Pre-Check, where they give expedited screening to those who have lower probability of carrying contraband. Other things like random secondary searches are also based on probabilities.

I think a one-year grace period is perfectly reasonable. They have to draw the line somewhere, otherwise people will try to fly with a 10-year old ID and insist it still looks like them.

That is the case for almost all foreigners. Even if there is DNA or fingerprint evidence available on record in their home countries, TSA doesn't have access to it.

Blame Congress for that, not the TSA.

Article seems a little breathless to me. Which I would expect from the Washington Examiner.
But fundamentally, if these migrants are attempting to board domestic flights, they should be required to go through the same protocol as any other traveler. If they can't, take the bus or train or drive.
If however they're trying to fly to their country of origin, is the Examiner implying we shouldn't allow that until they acquire proper ID? In other words, until they attain citizenship? I would think the Examiner would be happy to see the back of them and the sooner, the better.
​​​​​Would this be an intelligent policy or simply a bureaucratic knee-jerk response that the rules must be followed, even if these rules, having not anticipated this particular circumstance, are utterly in conflict with a more overarching policy?

And no one has ever thought of having a sanitized name and fake ID in order to avoid basic security methods.

The truth is that if they treat everyone who doesn't present an ID as a selectee, matching against the no-fly list becomes somewhat unnecessary. The premise of the no-fly list is that there are certain people who are just too dangerous to fly. That isn't necessarily a premise based in reality. (Individuals are downgraded from the no-fly list to the selectee on occasion, for example).

I do blame Congress for most of the stupidity in our laws, but I also have to blame TSA for their own stupidity in the application of those laws.

In the case of RealID, my memory is a little fuzzy - is TSA's stance that non-compliant DLs will no longer be accepted as valid ID for flying specifically dictated by a law, or is it their own policy based on the RealID act?

You don't have to have US citizenship to have valid ID. However, since people who have been vetted and pose no threat are required to show valid ID to board a plane (something which provides no security benefit whatsoever), it's unfair that a whole group of people who are, by definition, nearly impossible to properly vet, should be exempted from the ID requirements for the sake of convenience.

TSA has policies in place for people who don't have valid ID - they're screened more 'thoroughly' (read: more invasively and abusively). But that's a lot of work for TSA. Using these 'notice to appear' documents as ID is a transparent form of laziness on TSA's part, a way of getting them out of fully screening all of the people in question under the no-ID policy.

The article did seem a little fearmongerish to me. But I agree in principal that TSA should be applying the same rules to all travelers with impartial consistency, and not only have they rarely done so throughout their existence, but this latest episode is a more glaring example of a whole group of people getting special treatment. Not only that, but they're getting that special treatment for the most ridiculous and frivolous of reasons: for TSA's convenience, not the travelers'.

We've discussed that particular logical fallacy ad nauseum here, but I think it bears repeating. ID doesn't matter, because it's far too easy to obtain fraudulent documents that allow an individual to obtain a real ID under an assumed name. Even with the RealID standards, it's not terribly difficult to use false documents to obtain an ID with a clean, assumed name, that would allow Osama Bin Laden himself to board a plane under the pseudonym Chuck Finley. You know, theoretically, and if he wasn't dead.

I'm sure the orders to take these lesser documents came down from on high and filtered down through DHS and TSA.
Apparently these highly placed individuals didn't get the memo that "ID MATTERS".

If you want to know about TSA's policies around ID, and how they check people who don't have ID:
1. papersplease.com
2. Google "IVCC SOP", eg https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/chec...enter-sop.html

You mean the "chance" the screener finds the person attractive?

Because ID is really for the airlines, not security (as you probably already know). The ID cross check with boarding passes makes tickets non-transferable, which lets airlines sell tickets at different prices at different times. Actual security just requires screening to keep weapons off planes (not that the TSA is particularly good at that, either).

Back before this RealID stuff, my state allowed driver license renewals by mail. What they wanted was the $$$, it is a revenue thing. I renewed my DL twice by mail, and they used the old original photo. By the time I had to get it replaced, the photo on my DL was pushing 20 years old. Yet it was considered a safe ID. Yes I kinda still looked like that poor quality old photo, but still. . .

All one can gather here is law abiding citizens have to go theu hoops while undocumented persons can pass thru with relatively easier time ?

No HMPS. If you want the same thing, just go to the airport without showing ID.

My nephew got his first passport at age 10. He's 14 now. It will be replaced next year. Meantime, he looks nothing like the little kid in that photo. He has no other state issued ID (unavailable in my state if under 15 years old). I'm traveling with him internationally tomorrow and all I can figure is to bring copies of his last five class photos in case he's questioned about it.

Although the airlines certainly benefit from the ID requirement, I disagree that airline revenue protection is the sole purpose of the ID requirement.

After 9/11, it was determined that only ticketed passengers should be allowed past the security checkpoint, for two reasons:
1) Reducing the number of people in the sterile area theoretically reduced the odds of Bad Actors getting through to a plane
2) Reducing the number of people being screened at security checkpoints eased the burden on the newly-created TSA, which shortened long security lines and allowed them to focus only on people who were actually getting on a plane

However, after that restriction was put into place, a number of incidents throughout the 2000s showed that it was ridiculously easy to pick up a discarded boarding pass and gain entry to the sterile area using someone else's ticket. In fact, one person was apprehended with numerous BPs in his backpack, most from flights that had already departed, many from previous days - they got him into the sterile area, because TSA was lax in checking the dates and times on the BP to determine its validity. The BPs were also in other peoples' names, leading to the question, "How can TSA know whether that's really YOUR boarding pass?" And so, the requirement to show ID that matches the BP was born, not for revenue protection, but out of a vague, undefined sense of fear that someone traveling under an assumed name is "up to no good" and poses some sort of threat to aviation security. Coupled with the outlandish notion that showing ID somehow roots out terrorists and criminals (as if they all have the word Terrorist stamped on their IDs or something), this convinced the general public that ID requirements were a genuine security measure.

The holes in the logical arguments are clear, starting with the fact that it's so easy to obtain falsified documents and use them to obtain genuine IDs under false names, and leading up to the realization that even if you travel under an assumed name with false ID, you still have to undergo exactly the same security screening as everybody else, making the ID requirement absolutely useless anyway.

The airlines never protested the ID requirements, because they do derive a benefit from it. But they're not the drivers behind it, and don't deserve the blame. The blame rests in two places - the flim-flam men at TSA who constantly repeat the false mantra that "ID Matters!", and the general public, for being gullible and paranoid enough to actually buy the lie. But I'm not going to lay this one at the feet of the airlines.