I would think that the Constitutional right to free travel applies to all forms of public conveyance, to all forms of common carriers. As commercial air travel has been deemed a common carrier, meaning that I cannot be refused transport if I have paid the requisite fare and are not acting in violation of any laws (such as being intoxicated or carrying an undeclared firearm), it is my opinion (since I am not a judge nor lawyer) that air travel is a protected form of travel. Granted, there are more serious security issues with air travel. A reasonable approach to those security issues includes a limited scope search of a passenger and his belongings only concerned with whether a passenger is in possession of a prohibited item. It should not include an identity verification requirement by the government because that hinders the right to free travel. It CAN include an identity verification requirement by the airline if I have purchased my ticket prior to arrival at the airport. This is to ensure that the fare paid & the ticket I hold is for my conveyance.

It seems as though knotyeagle's experiences are in direct contradiction to your assertion, and he offered up evidence of that.

• He was not required to file a flight plan.
• He was not required to show an identity document to take control of his aircraft.
• Nor was his passenger required to show an identity document to any government entity to board the aircraft knotyeagle was piloting.
• The government has no record of who the passenger was.

So what was that statement about protecting the airspace? Although it didn't happen, the passenger could have overwhelmed knotyeagle, taken control of his aircraft, and crashed it into Disney World's Cinderella Castle, likely killing people. Although it was an accident, the recent incident where Yankee player Cory Lidle's plane crashed into a Manhattan high-rise shows that even single engine aircraft can be a danger to "public safety." That doesn't, however, give the government carte blanche to overstep the Constitution.

In response to your 2 points above, I think/assume the rationale behind #1 is that an expired credential is more likely to be discarded by the original owner and subsequently more likely to be "recycled". For those that feel ID should be required to travel--I do not--it would seem they would expect a determined terrorist to alter the picture but not the expiration date.

Secondly, I fail to understand why knowing who someone is should alter the level of screening/scrutiny one receives. If John Doe is screened and determined to be free of threats to aviation, then does it matter if his name is Moe Szyslak or Apu Nahasapeemapetilon?

I would agree with you 100% except for the fact that only people traveling (as far as I know) on civilian air carriers are screened for dangerous items. Why is that? Why is someone traveling on plane with a gun more dangerous than someone traveling on a bus or train or boat? Why is the public safety need so much greater on a plane?

I'm asking here. I assumed (and yes, I know what happens when you assume ;)) that it was due to national airspace. It's the only thing that made sense to me. And, if that's true, then that would explain a lot of other rationale for many of the things TSA does. Apparently this is not correct. Apparently airspace has zip to do with anything. So that leaves me back at the start - the G has to have a rationale that passes some sort of Constitutional muster to be able to do what it wants. Sometime, somewhere there had to be a reason given for why the government can enact stricter measures for civilian aviation than for other public conveyances.

So, begging the question, what is it? Anyone?

Bueller?

(The latter examples are private transactions. And an SSN does not verify identity. A valid SSN card verifies that such a person is alive.)

A license is required to drive because the operation of a motor vehicle in public presents a real danger, independent of any intended harm. On the other hand, being a passenger on an aircraft presents no significant danger of unintended harm.

The reason that implementation of ID checks was tolerated is that the airlines implemented them for revenue protection before the TSA existed.

There are no "gun rights" in Australia, and, much is it may annoy the NRA, I doubt there is a universal human right to own firearms.

Are you sure about this? Under the statute that was upheld in Hiibel, Nevada Revised Statute § 171.123(3), the LEO has to find circumstances reasonably indicating that person has committed a crime before he can ask for identification.

The OKC courthouse bombing would disagree with that assertion. With a truck, McVeigh was able to get right up to the building.

Why the hell would private contracted security break locks? Checked bags weren't searched by the G until 2002. Bags were locked and handed over to airlines and placed on the plane.

Apologies if someone has address the SSN issue - I've not read the entire thread.

The SSN is required for tax purposes, not to verify identity. However, since the inception of the wonderful Patriot Act, we now need a DL (or some "official" ID with a picture) to open a bank account, apply for a mortgage.

No you don't the whole idea behind the black ones is that you don't hear them :p

That option is equally reprehensible.

All should be screened the same, whether they provide ID or not.

I do not agree with ID checking by TSA but I don't understand how ID checking by the airline provides revenue protection.

Say I purchase an airline ticket and for some reason can't travel. I give the ticket to Joe who uses that ticket. The seat sold is used and the airline does not benefit either way.

So what am I missing here? Selling the same seat twice? If my ticket cannot be refunded I would not cancel my reservation so it would only be available at the check in cutoff point. Then most likely made available to a stand by flyer.

What the airlines don't want is you buying up the few cheapo seats offered on a flight and selling them at a higher price.

And the airlines do make money on spoilage: you buy a ticket and can't fly but the airline keeps your money and might even sell the seat again anyway (overbooking).

In no case should the government check IDs. That should be strictly up to the airlines.

You give too much credit to the thinking processes of those that make the rules/laws. The reason why an expired license is not sufficient to provide ID really has nothing to do with recycling or identity theft.

The simple matter is it is easier to narrow down what is acceptable (valid ID) than it is to list all the possible exceptions. Unfortunately for regular folks the only time an ID is invalid is when it expires. D'oh!

Every time I look at the title of this thread it strikes me: how can anyone mention TSA and the Constitution in the same breath?

It's more like: "TSA or the Constitution".

TSA's airport identification policies are flawed and make us less free
 

That a person no longer has the permissions that come with a valid passport should have no effect on the utility of the passport -- the document -- as proof of identity. Similarly, when someone's license to drive expires, the document that was issued (the wallet card; the thing people loosely refer to as the license) is still just as useful for identification purposes as it was the moment before it expired.

However, our ability to judge whether a particular document of this sort is authentic or not, relative to our ability to judge the authenticity of new documentation, diminishes over time as we make improvements to the documents we issue. A driver license card that was created many years ago is very likely to be easier to alter or forge than one that was created more recently regardless of its expiration date. And as you suggested, a person's appearance changes over time, making a photograph of him or her less useful with time.

So I think it is sensible to consider these documents too old to be useful at some point in time. For example, consider an expired driver license from a time before photographs were included on the card: That old card is as useful as it ever was, but newer ones are so much more useful than the old one that it's reasonable for us to "raise the bar" and discredit the old one. But again, to consider these documents completely useless for identification the moment they expire -- given the current norm for length of time from issuance to expiration -- seems absurd to me.

I'm more concerned that this focus on whether an expired document is "sufficient proof of identity for domestic air travel" is harmful. A government requirement that someone prove his identity to government agents prior to travel is an infringement upon that person's liberty. In my mind, there is no such thing as "sufficient proof of identity for domestic air travel" because proof of identity is simply not necessary. A complete lack of proof of identity is sufficient for domestic air travel.


Such a policy would be very misleading. The meaning of "screening" varies greatly, so I'll assume that for the purpose of this discussion, when you wrote "screening" you meant "search for dangerous items". You've suggested that we allow people to avoid a thorough search for dangerous items if they identify themselves, and thus that identification and searches for dangerous items provide similar improvements to air travel safety. Clearly, they do not.

This is precisely the policy that was in effect a year ago. See my first post at FT for information about my experiences pressing this issue. TSA's airport identification policy changed on June 21, 2008.

Under our present system, that which went into effect in June of 2008, people are not barred from travel for failure to present credentials at a TSA checkpoint if they say their credentials were misplaced or stolen, verbally identify themselves, and cooperate with an interrogation.

Yes. I want this every time I travel by commercial air. Our government presently bars us from doing so because it would prevent them from arbitrarily restricting our freedom of movement using blacklists or otherwise.

TSA's current practices make us less free.

The reason why screenings were first enacted was an attempt to prevent hijackings. Most passengers did not mind the extra intrusion if it saved a trip to some third world hole. The screenings were done by either a private company or the airline personnel. If you had a problem with a screener you had recourse with the company that hired them. All in all a pretty good system.

After 9/11 the claim of a secure airspace was tossed in to justify the enormous amounts of money being thrown into the freshly minted DHS and TSA. Sad fact is the TSO do as good or worse than the private screeners.

Right now, because my name is on the ticket, and I have to prove that I am the person named on the ticket, I can't resell the ticket to anyone else. Twenty years ago, before presenting IDs was required, you could always fly under someone else's ticket, as long as your gender matched the gender of the name on the ticket (and you were willing to lie and call yourself by the name on the ticket when you checked in).

The reason this is significant is that, with the way that airline seats are currently sold, just about every seat on an aircraft is sold at a different price. Being able to buy tickets and resell them creates the opportunity to have a secondary market for plane tickets. Obviously, the airlines aren't interested in allowing such secondary markets to exist, since that would allow others to profit off of the service the airline provides.

Not exactly.

Let's review history. Until the first Gulf War in 1991, I never showed ID to any airline or security checkpoint. For a brief time, airlines were ordered by the FAA to demand ID of all passengers. So I showed ID at the ticket counter. Not at the checkpoints. After the brief Gulf War ended, so did the ID checks. My airline of choice (AA) did not again request ID until the summer of 1996.

Why 1996? When TWA 800 blew up, the Al Gore-led commission was certain that curbside checkin and lack of mandated ID contributed to the disaster, so once again, airlines were ordered by the FAA to demand ID (and curbside checkin was suspended for a while). So once again, ID was requested at the ticket counter. Not at security checkpoints.

The ID requirement was not rescinded even after it was determined that TWA 800 blew up on its own, not because ID-less passengers used curbside checkin.

In 2001, airlines still demanded ID from passengers. The FAA required that airlines demand ID.

Airlines did come to learn the revenue protection that ID provides - but airlines generally did not demand ID from 1991-1996 when no government mandate existed and only reinstated ID requirements when ordered by the FAA in 1996. Since then, airlines have been required to demand ID of passengers and at no time since 1996 have airlines been freed of that requirement.

On September 11, 2001, the 19 hijackers complied with the ID requirements.

Later that day, Secretary of Transportation, Norman "POS" Mineta announced that travelers would henceforth have to endure more "random identification checks" at the airport:

http://www.dot.gov/affairs/dot9301.htm

to request is very different than to demand
 

FWAAA, thanks for the thorough history. Could you please clarify in which situations identification was demanded and in which situations it was requested? I'm almost positive that I have read that there were times during which airlines were required to request but not to require that passengers identify themselves.

I believe we conflate the two because often, in an attempt to seem polite, people make a request that would, is not granted, become a demand. In fact, people are often manipulated by police officers into doing things they need not do because the officer requests something that he does not have the authority to demand.

Incorrect on at least 2 counts, at least for domestic itins.
1) Of course you can transfer the ticket to someone else. If you have a ticket that I wanted to use, I could easily use any number of methods to get to the "sterile side" of the airport, and then board the plane using your BP in almost all circumstances, at will. Most sheeple in the general populace are scared that the TSA will find out, and arrest them. Most on here are too wise for that concern.
2) Re: your 20 years ago gender issue: Mrs. NY-FLA and I used to book tickets on Eastern, hence 20 years ago, as (single initial) NY-FLA so we could credit both of our flying to a single FF account. This never created an issue. Given the current low level of BP checking right at boarding, I would be confident that 1) above could be used cross-gender, even now, in the vast majority of cases.

I still believe that the only function ID checking currently serves is revenue protection. It's effective because the T Stazi A, along with some bullying by the airlines, has cowed the majority of the flying customers into submission.

...and don't forget the silly next-of-kin forms they started requiring for all overseas flights. Again, all of the sheelpe gladly complied and wrote out names, addresses, and phone numbers for spouses, friends, and relatives. Don't worry...the government made the airlines destroy all of the lists right after the plane landed safely.

For a while, the airlines tried to made the next-of-kin data mandatory. If I lost the ballte of informing the counter agent politely that NOK was voluntary, I reluctantly agreed and listed one of four favorite cousins: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Jerome (Curly) Howard, or Alfred E. Neuman. It was interesting -- they all lived together at the same address: 880 River Ave, Bronx, NY 10451 (Yankee Stadium).

That I know and understand. The plane can be taken out of the country whereas it's a lot harder to drive a bus to Cuba. :)

But what about bombs and the like? Why is the public safety aspect much more important on a plane rather than a bus or ship or boat, unless we're talking about bombs in US airspace?

The public safety aspect is not much more important with a plane. If we started getting a rash of bus hijackings you can believe that security on those things would change too.

Although the TSA would like to assume that any terrorist use of an airplane would kill 3000 people, the reality is that is just not the case.