Exercise Your Right To Fly Anonymously
 

The Identity Project (IDP) needs your help in an ongoing investigation into the right to fly without ID.

The 9th Circuit stated in its Gilmore decision that when traveling by domestic commercial air, citizens had a choice: they could either show ID or submit to additional screening.

Please try doing some or all of your air travel by declining to show ID and report back about what happens to you.

Be a Freedom Flyer: the Constitutional rights you protect and defend are your own.

If the TSA treats you like a SSSSelectee/haraSSSSee but still lets you fly, will this project end up affirming the despicable Gilmore decision?

I flew once w/o ID and I was haraSSSSed. It sucked but I still flew. I filed a complaint nonetheless.

I might be up for this some time when I get to the airport a little early.

My main concern is that the airline wouldn't let me board, however--not the TSA (since TSA doesn't even check IDs).

Does anybody have a copy of the transcript from the hearing where the gov't said we could fly without ID if we submitted to haraSSSSment?

Even if you get thru TSA can't the airline still refuse to let you board?

That's what happened to Gilmore, and that's definitely my concern.

But I suspect that it may not be as much a problem any more, since the airlines no longer check ID at the gate, so once you're through security (including both the airline contractcd ID checker and the TSA--who do not normally check ID), as long as your BP has the stamp of approval on the SSSS mark, you should be okay. Key word "should" (not "will").

If I did it, I'd still bring ID with me, but would try to avoid showing it.

I just checked Delta's Domestic General Rules Tariff,

RULE 35: RUFUSAL TO TRANSPORT
c) Proof of identity
When a passenger refuses on request to produce positive identification; provided, however, that DELTA shall have no obligation to require positive identification for persons purchasing tickets and/or presenting tickets for the purpose of boarding aircraft.

So when would they ask for ID?


I looked at United.com under ID requirements :


For travel within the 50 United States only.
For domestic flights – all passengers 18 and older are required to present valid and unexpired government-issued photo identification. (federal, state or local). For example: driver’s license or passport. All customers must carry government-issued identification with them at all times and may be asked to show identification during boarding.

In the absence of government-issued photo identification, two forms of identification are required. One must be government issued. Example: Social security card and credit card.

Customers without proper identification may be subject to additional security screening procedures.

Sort of vague. You are required to carry ID but may be subjected to additional security procedures if you don't have it.

Either you have to have it or you dont.

Someone should try to live a year in the US without carrying ID and write a book about it. I'd read it.

Assuming you already had credit and/or an ATM card, I'd say it would not be too terribly difficult.

I think given the dual purpose of requiring ID for travel, it would be very difficult to travel anomomously on any common carrier. For security purposes, requiring ID is nonsensical - it offers nothing to improve security.

However, the airlines (and other common carriers who issue tickets) have always had a vested interest in knowing who their customer is. In the past, given no competitive impetus to do so, airlines just assumed the person showing up to fly was the same person whose name was on the ticket. Way back when, before deregulation and restricted tickets, it probably didn't matter much either.

With restricted tickets barring transferability, the government gave the airlines exactly what they wanted - the right to demand ID to make sure the person traveling was the person named on the ticket. I doubt the airlines really believed this was for security...it was a revenue protection gift all along, even if the government really believed it would provide security.

In the past, ID was checked at the counter. With the advent of online check-in and kiosks, the responsibility to verify ID now falls to the ID checker positioned outside the screening area. This opens up a unique way to bypass the revenue protection requirement.

I can transfer a ticket to another person by having that person buy a refundable one-way ticket to get through security, I use online check-in to get their boarding passes for my ticket, then they use my ticket for passage. Upon their return, they just cancel the refundable ticket(s). Voila. Revenue protection is now bypassed.

Just proof positive that every new rule has its own loophole.

Airline revenue protection is not the government's business.

ID checking does nothing for security.

Ergo, the government should drop the ID requirement to fly or be additionally haraSSSSed. Moreover, it should get the hell out of the airline and airport security business.

One could argue it has never been in the security buisness in the first place.

Would you feel better about it if the airlines came all out and said: we won't issue you a boarding pass if you can't prove your name matches on the name on the ticket, and we will not let you on our plane unless you can prove that your name matches the name on the boarding pass you hold?

If it was all airline rules, and all airline personnel/contractors checking IDs, and the government was completely uninvolved, would that change anything in your opinion of the procedure?

Airlines would be within their rights to do that, but they probably wouldn't have in the same way that restaurants don't ask you to show your ID when you are paying with a credit card at your table.

It is the sort of intrusion that puts off customers in a hospitality based industry. Now, on the other hand, if you can convince people that it isn't you who are asking, but rather that the government is mandating it..

Yes, I would be fine with that. The airlines should be able to decide whether to do that or not do that themselves. The airlines that make it too much of a pain in the ... would rightly lose business to those who choose to eliminate or make the process painless.

The government should be 100% out of the process, however.

Fair enough. However, even with the government involved, what exactly is the problem you have with showing ID? It's useless for security, I agree, but what is it about showing your ID that annoys you so much? It's not like the IDs are recorded and your movements tracked, I would object to that as well, but I have no problem with showing my ID to some dolt who sees so many of them each day that he could care less about who you are, as long as you're the person whose name appears on the boarding pass.

Even if this guy is paid by the government, and complying with a government regulation, what does it matter? You're still anonymous, just one of thousands of flyers each day, it's just that some guy has matched the name on a little plastic card with your name on it against a name on a boarding pass. So what?

Where exactly is your problem with this? Is it about the waste of $$, or do you take issue with something else?

This is not meant as a criticism or anything along those lines, I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from. :confused:

It's because many of us are old enough to remember a time with more pride and less fear.

:confused: Still not getting it. What does showing your ID have to do with pride, or lack thereof? :confused:

Perhaps it's my European upbringing, but I honestly don't understand why it's such a big deal for some Americans to have people know who they are, or at least having these people know they are who they say they are (by virtue of their boarding pass).

I usually take a pretty liberal stance when it comes to governments checking what their citizens are doing, but in this case, I fail to see the harm or the impact on privacy, since there's no storage of data.

On international flights, I would see a problem, especially if inbound to the US as a non-US citizen. I no longer visit the States because I don't trust the current US administration with the slightest bit of my personal information. However, since on US domestic flights, the ID is only verified and no information is being stored, I honestly cannot understand what the big deal is.

I do not wish to identify myself without a good reason to do so. It is no one's business who I am, unless I have some kind of relationship established with them that mandates I show my ID, or there is some kind of business situation where identifying me makes sense, e.g. I am trying to cash a check at a bank that does not know me.

The issue is incrementalism and facilitation of government legal authority to tighten the noose around privacy.

There is also offshore storage and processing of data -- including of data stolen by agents of the US government offshore -- to get around US laws and the laws of several other countries. The matching of ID and data being stored/processed may not be from the same source, but they are often married and at least occasionally used by US authorities. Certainly erodes privacy too, or does worse.

Ah, but it is stored. Without the ID requirement all they have a record of a flight booked in your name, anyone could've flown. With the ID requirement, they have a record that you flew on a particular flight. Never mind that people can forge identification, it is a stored record.

I believe you answered your own question.

So what you're saying is that the problem you have is not really being forced to show ID, but no longer being able to fly under an assumed name if you wanted to because of the ID requirement?

I don't even show my ID when asked to by a store clerk if I am using my credit card.

I refuse to identify myself if I do not have to. I don't want my government forcing me to identify myself without a really good reason to do so. Traveling by air is not a really good reason. An airline wanting to protect its revenue is a more palatable reason to ask me for ID or at least some questions that would identify me as the purchaser/traveler, but when the government tells me I must show ID or be haraSSSSed when I fly, I want to tell that government to go pound sand and replace those in government responsible for such asinine mandates.

Hmmm. Someone who understands market principles ;)

Yeah, but your credit card is ID.

Now just wait till they start outlawing cash. They're already trying to do that.

I paid cash for new car once, and they threw a damn fit!

M8

IDs at hotels
 

Once in a while, a hotel demands to see my ID at checkin. I always refuse. Some of them bluff and pretend that they won't check me in, but I call their bluff. It always leads to a nice long conversation with the manager on duty about the various purposes served, if any, by the ID check. And I always get checked in eventually, after having spread around some badly needed education!

The most recent such incident was at Marriott Crystal Gateway on February 25.

Bruce

The Marriott Crystal City Gateway and the Hilton Crystal City are the two properties in the DC-area where I routinely hear about ID demands from hotel employees. At the latter they even took photo copies of ID, and it's not clear what the hotel did with such photocopies. :(

I think Spiff is onto something here. I initially thought checking ID was harmless but it got me thinking about my irritations on personal info tracking. Go to Vegas and every casino wants you to sign up for their slot card. Why? To track your gambling habits; what you play, how often, the amount you play and a myriad of other variables.

Shop at Von's, Safeway, Albertson's and they all require you to sign up for their club card to get the discounts. Same deal, they track your spending habits. I have all the store club cards on my key ring but refuse to provide any personal data. It's nobody's business what I buy.

Technology is a wonderful thing but I'm sure these companies are selling and trading my personal information. I get uneasy when I receive a coupon printout with my grocery bill for an odd product I know I bought 3 weeks ago. I feel my privacy has been invaded or at least that of my pseudo identities of Mickey Mouse, SuperMan and Albert Einstein.

Just had a PM conversation.

What about people you meet who then go "google" you? :rolleyes:

I've heard that "eligible bachelors/bachelorettes" should run away from such members of the opposite sex. Is that true?

Identity disclosure politics -- including online-related ones -- are gaining steam? It seems so, but mostly far from home and less at home than should be the case.

Married womanizers should stay away from these types also! :D

I think a lot of this so called "public" data should not be so public.

M8

I'm not as hard core, and have actually relented on occasion to get something I want from the government. Notable on the list are several state issued CCW permits (license to carry concealed firearms, or whatever your locale might call them).

I use one of these when asked for ID for a rare CC purchase. The reaction to that alone usually overcomes my irritation about being asked in the first place :D .

It's a infrastructure ready-made for abuse: for tracking and surveilling "unAmerican" folks, or for hassling, harassing, or even restricting the travel of "subversive" types who are not in favor with the government power. Has the government gone that far yet? No. But it's a basic principle of good civic hygiene that you try to avoid creating a system pre-built for pushbutton civil liberties infringements. The temptation to abuse the system is so great, that mere existence of such a system is a danger to freedom. It makes it too easy for a future government inclined towards a police state to impose, in the future, restrictions that we would find abhorrent. I don't want to set up a situation that would allow an evil government to seize power, and hold it. The best way to prevent that is to avoid creating an infrastructure that makes those abuses as easy to set up as the "flip of a switch".

I also hate the precedent. IDs are spreading all over, and the argument I hear is "well, you have to show ID to fly, so why shouldn't you have to show ID to (X)?", where (X) can be things as crazy as "get on a public bus and ride across town". The photo ID requirement creates a "papers, please" society where the public is habituated to demands to see their ID, and that's not a good thing.

Oh, yeah? How do you know? For all I know, airlines might be saving all PNRs. (You might say that they didn't save the "ID", but when they check that the name on your ticket matches the name on your ID, and then save the name on your ticket in a database, well, the difference is academic.)

Keep in mind the recent revelations that AT&T has a giant database with records about every call that has been placed through their network over the past few decades. A decade ago, would you have guessed that AT&T was recording all this information? Would you have guessed that AT&T would turn it over to the NSA to allow them to do data mining, even of US citizens, even lacking probable cause or a warrant or court oversight? How do you know something similar can't happen to the airline databases? How do you know it hasn't already happened? I don't think it is overly paranoid to be concerned that this information could be abused.

I want to retain control over my personal information, and I don't appreciate a government that forces me to relinquish control for no good reason.

Well, not quite. I have to tell my real name to the airline. That's not flying anonymously. That's very different from a system where I can make up any name I like to put on my ticket, and fly without getting hassled about ID.

As Adam Corolla wisely says: "More mystery, less history"

:D

Ok, given your European upbringing, here is an analogy you may understand. You may be aware that in many European countries, for a long time the phone bill did not report the phone numbers you had called. (I don't know whether this is still true today.)

Do you know why?

The answer is instructive, and if you happen to know the answer, perhaps the analogy to airline privacy will be clear. (If you don't know the answer, just ask, and I will gladly oblige.)

I don't understand the distinction you are trying to draw. The two are two sides of one coin. If you are forced to show ID, you cannot fly under an assumed name.

I'm not saying I feel the need to fly under an assumed name for my everyday travel. I'm just saying that I prefer to know the option is available -- say, when I want to fly to attend that demonstration in favor of some cause that is "unpopular" among those currently in power.

So what do you do when travelling internationally? There are several countries where hotels must keep records of who their guests are - including passport information. Do you refuse to show your passport in such a case as well?


Assuming, of course, that you do travel internationally.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry7290/4.0.0 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1)

When I travel abroad, I know I must obey the laws of the countries I am visiting. In some countries, I have fewer rights and civil liberties. It is my choice to visit such places. I've shown my ID for hotels and credit card purchases, especially in Germany. However, the US does not have such requirements and in my country it is my priviledge and pleasure to decline to show ID whenever possible.

i have no problem letting the airline know who i am. i have no problem with them making sure that the person on the ticket is the one flying, and that person is actually on the plane.
if the worst happen and the airplane crash, i would not want to put myloved ones through the gruesome process of waiting for someone to find one of my teeth for identification. i would want the airline to tell them without a shadow of a doubt that i was indeed on the aircraft.

Another thread that reminds me of my 4 year old son yelling at his 5 year old sister, "You're not the boss of me!"... :rolleyes: