[For IP, if you wish - pt]
From RISKS 23.50: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/23.50.html#subj6
----------------- U.S. air travel without government identification <Dan Wallach <dwallach@cs.rice.edu>> Thu, 19 Aug 2004 19:41:02 -0500 Recently, John Gilmore has been publicly decrying the unstated Federal requirement that one must present government-issued identification (e.g., a driver's license) in order to travel via air within the U.S. Unfortunately for me, I got to test this requirement on a recent trip to give a talk at Fermilab when I managed to leave my driver's license at home. Here's what happened. For what it's worth, I've recently taken to carrying two wallets. The large one has my money, credit cards, receipts, and other assorted junk. The small one has my business cards and the two ID cards I most often need: my driver's license and my university ID card (a magstripe card that I need to get into my building after hours). In order to make my flight at the ungodly hour of 7:35am, I had to get up quite early. In the confusion of the morning, I managed to leave the little wallet at home. I didn't notice this oversight until I was standing in front of the ticket counter at 7:00am. In order to have gotten my driver's license, I would have had to miss my flight. Instead, I decided to see how the system would work without it. == Intercontinental Airport: Houston, Texas I pleaded my case to the Continental ticket agent. "Do you have any picture ID on you at all?" Nope. I showed her my Continental frequent flyer card, my credit card, and my social security card (which I probably shouldn't have had in my wallet, but that's a story for another day) as well as my boarding pass, printed that morning on my home computer. She escorted me to the security guard, with all my cards in her hand, and briefly described the situation. The guards expressed some confusion, but decided to let me through. After that, everything proceeded normally. == Fermilab: Suburban Chicago, Illinois My hosts at Fermilab had helpfully arranged a rental car for me. It dawned on me that I'd never get out of the rental car lot without a driver's license. I called Fermilab's travel agent and explained my predicament. As it turns out, Fermilab has a limo service that they regularly use. The travel agent made a reservation for me with the limo service, who happily picked me up at the airport and delivered me to Fermilab. If you're into high-energy physics, you know all about Fermilab. For the rest of us, they have a ring, about 1km in radius, around which they fling protons and anti-protons at very high energies, arranging for them to collide inside a massive detector. Those high-energy collisions cause all sorts of interesting subatomic particles to come flying out, hopefully to be detected by a variety of impressive devices. (My high school physics teacher quipped that it's like trying to learn how cars work by smashing them together and seeing what falls out.) Before September 11, the Fermilab campus was wide open, and the locals could go fishing in the lake, jogging around the ring, and so forth. These days, you have to go to a guard shack. Visitors get a limited pass and are instructed to only go to specific places where they're allowed (e.g., the education center). I'd been told that a badge would be waiting for me. The guard asked for my ID. "Let me tell you a story," I began. Ultimately, the guard had to telephone my hosts who drove down to the guard shack to pick me up. After that, it was smooth sailing. == O'Hare Airport: Chicago, Illinois Everybody to whom I'd told this story was amazed that I'd gotten as far as I did, and I was repeatedly warned that O'Hare security was quite stringent. Just to make sure, I had the limo get me to the airport a full two hours before my 11:00am flight. I printed out my boarding pass using the Continental kiosk, using my credit card to authenticate myself to the system, and then explained my story to the ticket agent. "Do you have any government issued ID?" Sorry, no. She wrote "SSSS" in big letters on my boarding pass, highlighted it in pink, and pointed me at the security checkpoint: the special security checkpoint without a line in front of it. I walked up and presented my boarding pass to the guard. "ID?" I began my story, but the only phrase that seemed to matter was "No ID", which she wrote onto my boarding pass. She then wrote "SSSS" again and circled it, also circling the original pink-highlighted copy. On I went. First the normal X-ray machine, take your laptop out, etc. Then, on the other side, they gave me the extended treatment, which normally occurs when I've been "randomly" selected. They X-rayed my shoes, swabbed my laptop for explosives, and unzipped every compartment of my luggage. After I passed all of those tests, they let me through, never once examining any of the cards I had in my wallet. Moral of the story While my story is hardly the same thing as a conclusive examination of the policies of all major U.S. airports, my experience shows that it is, indeed, possible to do interstate air travel without a driver's license. You're no longer using the "fast path" of the airport security apparatus, and there is clearly some variation in how the rules govern your slow path through the system. However, if you're willing to put up with the "SSSS" treatment, then it appears that you can legally travel by air within the U.S. without a government-issued ID. (Gilmore acknowledges this in his lawsuit, which is focused on finding out where the requirement for presenting ID came from, in the first place.) Postscript As a Continental frequent flyer, I was invited to show up at the airport to be measured for a new biometric-based system that they've installed in Houston. (I think it measures fingerprints, but I'm not entirely sure.) I was out of town, and thus unable to give that system a shot. They do require several forms of ID to get yourself registered, so it will have to wait for another day. Maybe I'll give it a try and write something about it later for RISKS. For all the known issues with biometric authentication, it's quite difficult to leave your fingerprints at home in the wrong trousers. ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen@leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]