bocastephen

It's nothing secret...Bennie Thompson. I'm not privy to whether or not the rumor is accurate, but his name was tossed around by the Obama team as a possible candidate for Secretary.

On another plus side, the campaign of his Republican opponent, national TSA cheerleader Peter King is at risk - that is someone we won't be sorry to see leave.

bfetch

Crap - just realized this too: no way around it especially if you fly using your passport as "federally required ID to fly". Right there above the passport issuing office is DOB.

Fudgers...(I'm being 'nice' here to all sensitive ears)...yet another data point in your PNR that's submitted to TSA for review (or as boca suggested, it may have been all along).

Looks like I may become an anonymous flyer here in the near future...so much for my Platinum level with AA.

N965VJ

So what would happen if my RFID card got some Hammer Time?

krobbins

Bocastephen - I hope you'll let the group know if you are successful in getting an appearance before the HS committee. I would certainly make every effort to attend, assuming it is not a closed hearing. Security stuff will be discussed, you know, in the attempt to make the US of A a safer place to live and travel, so perhaps the unwashed masses like me will not be welcome. I have ways, though, so do let us know or PM me if you don't want to post it for the world to see. ^

studentff

Hmm, OK, thanks. That actually doesn't reassure me too much. Norm Mineta, after all, was seen as a civil-rights champion, and his contribution to the TSA debacle was concluding that it was OK to treat passengers like criminals as long as all passengers were equally treated like criminals without regard to "protected" criteria such as race, religion, nationality. Personally I'd prefer that only criminals were treated like criminals.

That's my big fear with a Democrat controlled DHS/TSA--they'll keep up the data grabs and rights trampling and actually step-up the rights trampling on non-minorities, citizens, and non-poor people to make the process look "fair." It's the equivalent of cops getting rid of a racial profiling problem in their pull-overs not by making fewer senseless driving-while-black pull-overs but by adding senseless pull-overs of white people to make the ratios consistent with the demographics (i.e., quotas). Such policies have the added plus for Democrats of requiring more government employees to make the senseless for-show stops/searches.

I'll be quite surprised (though pleasantly so) if an Obama administration cares one lick about the travel plight of or civil rights/liberties violations against white, male, working-age, college educated, middle and professional class frequent travelers.

Getting rid of Peter King would be nice though.

Flaflyer

Since this rule will take over CBP screening of international passengers, it will have to be set up to use data fields DD-MM-YYYY like international documents and passports. Since about 50% of Americans are clueless, this will result in 50% transposed day and month numbers on domestic tickets. I see a cluster f coming.

For those paying cash for tickets , it would be fitting for all to use a single date of birth: October 22 plus a year to match your age (with a margin of error of plus zero/minus ten years). Anyone remember why a lot of "people" had the same DOB in Buckaroo Banzi? If asked why 10/22 darn it I mean 22/10, say "I'm honoring my hero. That's Big Brother's birthday."

KRSW

Coming? The TSA/DHS have been with us for 6 long years thus far.

cestmoi123

I've always thought that Kip might actually be a Red Lectroid...

Global_Hi_Flyer

A government that tracks each and every citizen is no longer a free country. We move closer and closer to that every day. The government doesn't trust its citizens, and technology gives them the opportunity to enforce each and every oppressive law. No wonder such a stink is being made to force photo ID to vote.

The goal is to create a "registered citizen" program. Won't be long before governments REQUIRE ID for every transaction, cash or credit.

MrAndy1369

Not that I'm taking TSA's side on this, but this isn't news. They aren't asking for your address - the TSA site says that only your DOB and gender will be requested. I believe that the FOX News person may have mixed it up with the international requirements, because an address is required for international travel under the Secure Flight mandates... however, for domestic flights, only DOB and gender will be requested - for now, anyway.

Can somebody point to me where it says this will be mandatory?

Thanks.

bocastephen

I've been told that address is one of the data points which will be included with SecureFlight - what is coming out immediately will likely be DOB and gender only, but there are other data points they plan to implement.

As you can well imagine, the airlines are howling over this because of the burden it places on their operations.

GUWonder

This is going to be done to make the airports into even bigger stomping grounds for fishing expeditions by law enforcement for routine criminal and civil matters that have nothing to do with counterterrorism -- then the TSA will come out waving the flag of how good their blacklists and procedures are at getting XYZ types of persons .... all while ignoring how they sold Americans on this garbage by waving the "terrorist" flag.

wr_schwab

Unless they specify a date standard, I tend write all my dates in ISO 8601 compliant format (YYYY-MM-DD). It comes from spending way to much time programming.

It already drives my coworkers nuts, so I can just imagine what it will do to the DHS.

Superguy

At least as far as RealID goes, I'm glad my passport's good for another 8 and my DL another 4 ... both RFID free.

Maybe for the birthday, we can use the "phone" version of !%@# U!

copwriter

Hard to say. If whomever was in charge of "reading" it (visually or electronically) couldn't get a signal off of the RFID chip, they might refuse to accept it. You might have a great constitutional argument as to why they would have to, but that probably won't help you make your plane.

Tread carefully. I once had a young traffic violator claim he had forgotten his driver's license (it was actually suspended), and gave me the name and DOB of one of his friends when I asked for information to verify he had a license. Bad choice--the friend had an active warrant for his arrest. We eventually cleared up the warrant issue, but he still got charged with driving while suspended and providing false information on his identity.

If you were to pick a DOB that happened to belong to someone with the same or a similar name and who had an outstanding warrant, you could have a very bad day. Don't think you're the only one around with your name. I have a Google News alert set up for my own name. My name isn't especially common, but I got a link to a news story today to the effect I had been murdered. Same name, but I don't think it was me.

Not what you would call statutory authority, but in this news story, everyone's favorite person was quoted:

"You have to give this information," Transportation Security Administration chief Kip Hawley said.