Surprising absolutely no readers of this website, the March 2025 REAL ID deadline isn’t going to happen. The first enforcement deadline, by the way, was in 2008.
Under a new proposed rule – that has not been finalized, even – full enforcement might not begin until May 2027. In the meantime, the plan is to hand a piece of paper to passengers whose IDs don’t meet the standards laid out in the 2005 Real ID Act telling them to get a new one.
Why Government IDs Matter At Airport Security In The First Place
The federal government has ‘no fly’ and ‘enhanced screening’ lists, where they check the names of passengers and decide under what conditions someone is allowed to travel, if at all. It’s a form of pre-crime profiling where people have been added to the list by mistake, for revenge, or for any number of reasons that you aren’t allowed to know. The government claims it’s exempt from judicial review.
In order for these lists to ‘work’ you have to show ID and the government has to be sure the ID is really you – otherwise you’d just fly under a different name, bypassing being on these lists.
The requirement of an ID to fly began as a ‘do something’ policy after the explosion of TWA flight 800. President Clinton demanded to be able to immediately announce new airline security measures, and told his National Security Council team to come up with some.
What Does It Take To Be REAL ID Compliant?
A ‘real ID compliant’ license has to have a person’s full legal name, signature, date of birth, gender, a unique identifying number, home address, and a front-facing photo.
Prior to issuing a ‘real ID compliant’ license, a state has to require:
- A photo ID (they make you present a photo ID to get a photo ID..) or ID that includes full name and birth date
- Documentation of birth date (usually a birth certificate)
- Proof of legal status (if you’re undocumented, better to just drive without taking a test) and social security number (something you didn’t even have to have when I was born)
- Documentation of your residential address
Why The Deadline Keeps Getting Pushed Back
For years the government has pushed deadlines with warnings that you won’t be able to fly unless your identity document gets updated.
No politician wants to be responsible for voters being turned away at the airport. And we’re always in an election cycle. So the deadline gets pushed back.
Meanwhile, states don’t even have the capacity to produce enough IDs by the March 2025 deadline if everyone without a compliant one choose to replace it. And TSA now says that there’d be so much confusion in line that the longer lines themselves would become a terror target (a point I made about TSA checkpoints in a long form article in Doublethink in December 2001).
You Can Still Fly Without REAL ID
TSA has already said that it plans to exempt mobile drivers licenses from REAL ID requirements when May 2025 rolls around.
People also go through checkpoints without firm ID checks all the time.
- They show ID that may not look like them, but matches their ticket
- It may not properly scan, where TSA is validating IDs electronically
- With a couple million passengers daily, any system will have outliers, usually TSA document checkers just accept whatever document they’ve been handed
And 2,000 people a day fly without any ID, of course, so the requirement to have a REAL ID isn’t exactly correct. They make you answer personal questions derived from a giant database about you and other Americans to prove your identity instead.
Watch Lists Aren’t Actually Effective In Any Case
Matching your name to the list of people flying on an aircraft ultimately is supposed to matter so that the government can check you against their various watch lists from lists requiring extra security screening to no fly lists.
But the government lists are junk, and the identification process is junk. The FBI has been placing innocent people on no fly lists and there are now over 2 million people on terror watch lists (when everyone’s considered a threat, nobody is). The Supreme Court is allowing one challenge to this government overreach to finally move forward.
- Formal responsibility for the list rests with the TSA and under 49 U.S.C. § 46110 inclusion is only reviewable by circuit courts in which judges are required to defer to the TSA’s judgment about all alleged facts and are permitted only to review the administrative record created by and provided to them by the TSA itself.
- Until 2015 the TSA wouldn’t even tell people whether they were on the list (making it difficult to sue to get off the list when you can’t prove you’re on it). The TSA does not tell people why they are on the list.
- Decisions to put someone on the no fly list are based on predictive pre-crime profiling rather than actual evidence about the individual’s actions or intentions. This is a huge leap in our justice system.
These Lists Aren’t Secure
Targeting lists aren’t only used by the government, and they’re not secure. In fact the U.S. distributes the list to over 1400 private organizations and shares it with other governments. It’s used for purposes beyond national security.
It appears that federal government lawyers have perjured themselves claiming that the list was not shared. It’s even given to “police forces at private universities, hospital security staff” and it’s not clear what, if any, restrictions there are on how the information is used. Meanwhile the government “adds hundreds of thousands of names to the list every year.” The entire list was leaked online via a Bahrain server.
Airport Security Is Security Theater
The TSA itself filed documents in court saying that a decade after 9/11 they did not know of any actual plots against civilian airliners.
Hardening checkpoints though just shifts risk. If airport security were working and there were active threats, we’d have seen attacks against high profile targets that are less secure. If positive name matching against government terror lists was key to security, then why hasn’t the Eras Tour been disrupted?
TSA has often failed to catch over 90% of contraband going through checkpoints, there have been tens of thousands of misconduct complaints against the agency’s staff, and yet we haven’t seen repeats in the U.S. of 9/11 largely because there aren’t as many threats as we think, they’re harder to carry out than we imagine, and because we’ve reinforced cockpit doors and passengers would no longer sit docilely by as an attack was carried out.
Meanwhile there hasn’t been another 9/11-style attack in the 20 years since REAL ID was mandated by law (or the 23 years since 9/11 itself) so there hasn’t been much of a rush to implement it. It doesn’t seem like it’s necessary. If bureaucrats felt that a security risk was imminent, REAL ID would prevent, and they’d be blamed for it when they delay you can be certain there wouldn’t be 20 years of delays.
It’s also unconstitutional to deny people the “right to assemble” which the Supreme Court has concluded applies to travel. The open question is whether is applies to all forms, eg flying. The TSA doesn’t want to find out and has repeatedly told courts that there is *no* requirement to have ID to fly, REAL or otherwise.
Very biased and poorly written article
I got the license sized passport that’s good for Canada and Mexico. It’s $30, good for 10 years and meets the requirements
I don’t have one and I don’t intend to get one until required. In my state it’s more expensive to get a real id than not. Why pay more? I laugh every time TSA insists that I need a new driver’s license.
Even crazier – I’ve been to two federal buildings in San Francisco where you have to wait on line to show your ID to a guard to get into the building – and the guard looks at the ID to make sure it is “valid”, then hands the ID right back. No check of the ID against any sort of list.
You comment that it’s security theater but those of us old enough to remember the massive number of hijackings in the 70’s and 80’s before security became “a thing.”
Consider that there have been essentially ZERO hijackings except for 9/11 since security “theater” was introduced. You can criticize TSA all you want (some of it might be applicable) but they do a damn good job.
@james p. thurber
“Except for 9/11” is doing an awful lot of work there.
@Terry Kozma – what do you disagree with?
Some states are great in that Real ID is the same cost or all driver’s license are Real ID compliant. There are a few states, like Washington state, that are pro-illegal immigrant so the driver’s license is not Real ID compliant. The way that state gets around the law is to offer a more expensive Enhanced Driver’s License.
New York has an illegal alien driver’s license but the Real ID version is the same price.
Which is the bigger scheduling joke?
The STAR CARD deadline?
Or, the LAX APM?
@sfo/phil. Unfortunately. The passport card cannot be used for air travel. It is good for 10 years and only can be used to drive to Mexico or Canada. Or travel by boat to Caribbean destinations where the home port is in America.
From travel dot state dot gov:” You cannot use the passport card to fly to or from a foreign country.
The Transportation Security Administration accepts the passport card as ID for domestic flights in the United States.”
I may get a Real ID compatible license when I renew in 2028. No need for the hassle yet, if ever. I carry my passport while traveling domestically, anyway. I will get a passport card next year when I renew my passport. It will cover any Real ID needed for domestic flights if I don’t want to take my passport.
No, Tony, you are wrong. Passport cards are specifically listed as an accepted form of ID by the TSA. You can’t use them in lieu of the passport book for entry into the US while flying. But, they are usable for TSA ID screening.
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification
Very interesting article AND comments.
Want to add my “two cents.” In the Dallas area I had a neighbor who is an illegal alien. He told me that before DACA/”Dreamer” law, he wasn’t able to legally drive and/or buy insurance. Now he is.
He works for an S&P500 company & makes six figures. His legal license to work expired and the renewal license got lost in the mail. Because of this, his company put him on unpaid leave AND he could not legally drive (In Texas we lie your DL expiration date to the date your documentation expires).
In the article, Gary wrote that to get a “Real ID compliant” license, you need to prove you are here legally. I assume this neighbhor received a license that is not Real ID compliant. Not sure what happens to this person when everyone is required to have a vcompliant license.
These delays remind me of the infamous Berlin Airport.
Also… if I’m not mistaken, the ID requirement, unlike many other security measures at the time, wasn’t opposed by airlines because it ended unauthorized reselling of tickets.
Will all be moot soon. 3D facial recognition will be good enough to cover all soon and deployed much more widely. Even those not in TTP will be default captured when the travel through certain checkpoints like TSA and CBP. Then the Koch shills will really have something to cry about.
“Not sure what happens to this person when everyone is required to have a vcompliant [sic] license.” You are allowed today and into the future to use a valid passport from any country. Obviously, tourists from other countries will not be required to have a US ID.
I have used the US Passport Card to fly on hundreds of regularly scheduled commercial flights. It’s not a substitute for a passport to fly internationally, but the passport card is and will continue to be accepted as valid passenger ID to fly within the US.
The “passenger ID is security” nonsense from the government and airline apologists is just that: nonsense that should be abolished with the resources instead focused on interdicting restricted weapons, explosives and incendiaries since the TSA needs to focus better in order to execute on that important objective when it still is failing like crazy to stop restricted items.
I fly over 80+ international flights a year on commercial carriers where no one checks my ID and I could just as well fly around as Micke Mous. Those flights are no less safe for me than flights supposedly secured by the TSA:
Sam Kim should know it’s not just Koch shills who oppose both the TSA/DHS “security state” infringements on personal travels by commercial means.
The government is behaving like a bad government when it treats some free citizens more equal than other free citizens — and this is exactly what kind of “all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than other animals” garbage we get from the DHS/TSA mentality plaguing the country still all these years after Sensenbrenner senselessly gave the country the REAL ID Act. The dude is dead and the REAL ID Act is still a liberty-infringing joke played on America.
The ability to travel or do any other lawful activity without being extensively monitored by or on behalf of the government is critical for the public to have a meaningful right for freedom of assembly and to assemble lawful opposition to government or other public actions of concern to any and all democracy-loving people.
The uniparty “anything for security” types are unwittingly and foolishly setting up things for Tr*mp-like wannabe dictators and “strong man”-lovers to have a more comprehensive and easier time to monitor and manipulate, coerce and control the public when privacy is undermined by — and not well protected — by the state
Support freedom and democracy by opposing passenger “ID is security” measures for travel.
Meanwhile there hasn’t been another 9/11-style attack in the 20 years since REAL ID was mandated by law (or the 23 years since 9/11 itself).
Maybe, just maybe, there hasn’t been another 9/11 style attack because TSA is doing their job? Maybe the reason you haven’t heard of threats is because TSA has mitigated a threat before it became reality?
Your statement actually shows the biggest danger of all – complacency. It’s complacency that is the biggest risk for another 9/11 style attack.
Does TSA get everything right? Absolutely not. But your statement in itself shows they are doing the important things right.
There’s no hijacks because of procedures such as barred and locked cockpit doors, not watchlists which I’m sure you’d be happy to be put on accidentally right?
Name on thing other than printing money the Govt does well? Mayor Pete failed on this one.
Just for clarification here please, I am required at some point to not only have a DL with Real ID, or a valid U.S. Passport for travel by air in or out of the US. Can someone tell me then, when they board the illegals on US Commercial Airlines, will they then be required to have Real ID as well. Not sure that they are required to have any ID currently.
@American it appears this part covers it:
“In coordination with its DHS counterparts, TSA has identified acceptable alternate identification for use in special circumstances at the checkpoint.”
@steve “Name on thing other than printing money the Govt does well?” Spending it.
Oops, that is to say government is very talented at spending, but I’m not suggesting they allocate it correctly.
My regular drivers license expires next month and I have been hemming and hawing about replacing it with a standard license (which I can do online/no appointment) vs. going in to DMV and getting the new one issued as a REAL ID (and paying $30 more). Honestly, this article doesn’t help with my decision… GARY, more of a so-what conclusion/what-would-you-advise point of view at this junction would be more helpful than what you’ve written.
Clicking through the hyperlink Gary provided to the TSA press release, it doesn’t say the deadline for showing a REAL ID at airport checkpoints is changing but rather it says TSA is proposing more flexibility for some circumstances.
I am no fan of the REAL ID (or the extra $30 cost and appointment time) but I don’t want to get in the habit of traveling with my passport for routine domestic travel. Despite the headline promising things will be delayed indefinitely, that’s not how I read the TSA press release and your blog posting doesn’t provide much actionable advice either.
Would appreciate less criticism of the roll-out of the REAL ID (which we can all agree with) and more advice to travelers about whether to bite the bullet and get one or continue to punt and cross our fingers.