Basically extortion to continue the absurd, ineffective security theater.
Is it that uncommon to have a passport in the US? That’s basically part of the common ID paper you’d have here.
Yes. We can travel over 3000 miles and still be in the same country with about every climate. Meanwhile for a family of 4 it would cost almost $700 to get passports and involve waiting weeks. Then flying say Seattle to Paris for instance would cost about $3000 before actually doing anything there. This is in addition to the $300-$400 spent every 5-7 years on normal identity documents that you need for other purposes. This cost varies substantially state to state.
Meanwhile families here are facing drastically escalating costs especially housing and medical.
Compare that to a European who could travel 100 km on the train and be in another country.
Americans have both increased dis-incentives and less incentives to travel internationally compared to Europeans.
So is this just legal way to bribe the TSA
without a REAL ID or passport
A passport is a really good thing to have, and lasts much longer than a Real ID state license. It ends up costing like $13/yr and it opens up the whole world to you. It blows my mind that on;y 50% of US citizens ever bother getting one.
It costs 165 bucks per person or almost $700 for a family of 4. Then they need $3000-$5000 to travel round trip once to a destination in Europe.
Why is europe the only place you’re considering travel to? It’s a big world out there
It costs thousands of dollars to travel to another country from the US.
There are other methods than direct flights
For some people in some cases, sure. Myself, I traveled in South America for 3 months last year and overall I saved money vs. expenses in the US, even with airfare included. Also, there’s probably 100 million Americans that live within a single tank of gas of getting to Mexico or Canada. There are plenty of lower-income Americans, Brits, Aussies, and Germans (to name the big groups) who manage to travel extensively for long periods at very low expense. I’ve met many of them, and they could make “thousands of dollars” (let’s say you’re talking about $3,000) last a good three months in many parts of the world. Look for deals, be willing to not get exactly what you want, and be patient, and travel can be (and had been for me) cheaper overall than paying US prices for housing food etc.
What about if you live in the real world? If I fell asleep for three months I’d wake up ten grand poorer. It’s great that you can completely uproot yourself for three months and then comeback and restart life and somehow save money, but that is so incredibly unrealistic. My bills don’t stop because I took a cheap trip to Brazil.
Yeah it’s a different lifestyle and not appealing or possible for everyone in every situation of course (not that I implied it was but for some reason I feel the need to defend my self on that point). I get that the systems we all live under have many of us completely captured by debt or bills and impoverished to the point where the major concerns in life are getting enough to eat each day and not freezing to death homeless out on the street. It’s conditions like that elsewhere in the world which cause people to emigrate in search of a better life in the USA, ironically.
Man, some of us are annoyed every time we have to drive into town to shop for groceries or go to work. I’m surrounded by nature at home. I don’t want to travel. You’d have to B. A. Baracas me to get me on an airplane or boat. I neither need nor want a passport.
Upvoted purely for a-teaming
hahaha now there’s something I haven’t thought about in a minute. I honestly hate airports, airplanes, the TSA, and flying myself. But I do love seeing places and people and experiencing things that I never would have otherwise, whether that’s in my home town, across the state, or across the world, count me in :)
OMG I forgot about that thank you
As a passport holder myself, that was my plan. This article has me wondering if we’d still be charged the fee. TSA is notoriously stupidly incompetent, and I wouldn’t put it past this system to be giving kickbacks to agents.
idk, not by the letter of the law, no. But they are they are pretty awful sometimes. I personally always used my passport for all flights even before REAL ID existed, it’s just easier for them than offering a license from a rural state like I live in that they may see once or twice a day.
Well over half of us live paycheck to paycheck and traveling is exorbitantly expensive. Especially international travel.
It sucks being broke.
Travel can be done cheap. Don’t go to the exorbitantly expensive shitty fake ass resort where you get food poisoning.
Go be real, in the real world.
Ding ding ding- the commenter your replying to must not be poor to think buying something you cannot use is a good idea 😂😭
Many citizens don’t leave their state. Plenty of them are hand to mouth and can’t afford groceries. Even local travel is a luxury to some, so I can understand why they might not have the desire to go through the process and pay for the passport, not to mention that many people don’t know their SSN or have their birth certificates.
Don’t forget that transgender Americans can’t get passports with the correct gender, either.
I looked it up, my understanding is US passports are currently issued with your “assigned sex at birth”, i.e. not your gender or biological sex.
Basically, the passport isn’t showing your gender.
No, it’s showing what’s in my pants. Or was in my pants at birth if I’ve had an operation. And if my gender presentation doesn’t match someone’s expectations, it means I will potentially get detained or harassed. Or possibly even arrested depending on the country.
So the intent is to hurt the trans community. And being all, ‘well actually’ about it being sex assigned at birth feels like a bad faith take.
Which is why you’re getting downvoted.
You know what I mean and it’s meant to out and punish transgender Americans for daring to live their lives without being persecuted. At best, it’s going to cause a massive headache for those whose looks no longer match their AGAB.
It’s weird to live in a world where sex assigned at birth and gender are two vastly different things.
Gender is sociology. Essentially caste and class roles.
Sex is biology.
Folks that like to conflate the two want gender roles to be immutable.
I don’t think so. I think if someone wants to change their gender that’s their business. It’s not something I’d want to do but calling it weird seems kind of judgy.
Oh for sure, I’m not saying foreign travel or passport fees are an achievable goal for every single adult American. But we are talking here about the group of people who fly at the very least domestically. And for that, you need Real ID, which does require you to supply things like your SSN and birth certificate. So for that group specifically that we’re talking about here, the domestic flyers that already need or have Real ID, I think a passport is a logical thing to get as well if it’s in your budget.
Showing this was not about security at all.
It never was
Well, it’s never been about security, it’s about surveillance. But it is reasonable to assume that REAL ID is their most efficient way to track travelers, and if you make them use their less efficient methods of tracking, they’ll offset the difference by charging you directly.
One could argue surveillance and tracking is about security. They’d be wrong. But they could argue that.
That’s absolutely about security. Just not yours. There’s a lot of people whose financial security is at risk if they can’t sell that data.
Title leaves out “or passport.”
In a push to get you to think you must have a Real ID, I’ve noticed the media constantly leaves out or minimizes the fact that a passport is sufficient to get you through an airport or any other place a Real ID is required.
So no extra fee of you have a passport.
Okay good, I used my passport last time I had flown so I was worried I’d have to cough up an extra fee the next time.
I’ve always just considered a passport to be a Real ID™.
From the U.S. Department of State website: https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/News/passports/passports-realid.html
The U.S. passport book and passport card are both REAL ID compliant.
You know some dumb shit TSA is gonna not understand that part.
Both Real IDs and passports are the premium options, you pay extra to have them.
TSA says the fee will cover the administrative and IT costs associated with the ID verification program and ensure the expense is covered by the travelers and not the taxpayers.
Ah, that makes sense. It costs $45 per person to do exactly what they were doing without additional cost up until now.
It doesn’t cost a tenth of that to do anything they’re allegedly doing now or have done ever. Fuck TSA sideways with a Midwestern wool sock after a week layover in Tulsa. 🤌🏼
Ok, so there are certainly going to be some administrative and maintenance costs associated with any system, and they are currently paid for by the tax payer. For arguments sake, lets just say that cost should instead be put solely onto people who choose not to take the steps necessary to get a REAL ID, ignoring the many legitimate reasons someone may not wish to or be able to do that.
The follow up question then, is how much does the fee need to be to offset that cost? Well, it will need to be based on the number of those who will not get a REAL ID even after the fee introduction, so it will likely be lower than it is now given the fee as a motivation. Currently 44% of issued id’s in the US are without REAL ID status. Let’s say that the vast majority of those people are motivated by this fee or other factors to finally get a REAL ID in the next year or two. Let’s say a bit over 75% of those currently without it are motivated to get one now (a major over estimation, surely). So only 10% of all US citizens with state issued ids wouldn’t have REAL ID.
Given an average of 2.9 million Americans fly every single day, that’s 290,000 non REAL ID flyers a day. Times $45, that’s $13 million per day, or $4.745 billion per year… to do administration and maintenance on an existing system.
If that is the true cost, that means that 40% of their current congressionally allocated budget of $11.3 billion is spent on maintaining this one system alone. That is simply absurd and anyone with half a lick of sense should know that. So either they are expecting well more than 90% of people to get a REAL ID soon or they are just massively overcharging people and pocketing the difference.
Most states have had real ID for nearly a decade, as they’ve been trying to implement, then delay, then try to implement then delay again due to a few straggler states not having it for their drivers licenses yet.
Most drivers have this already. And have for a long time. It’s those that haven’t had a reason to update an id that might not yet
To be fair, in CA it costs exactly $45 to get a renewal REAL ID drivers license. That is paid by the traveler, not the taxpayer. The difference is that is a one-time fee to get a card that works for either 5 or 10 years, versus a fee every time you fly.
It’s hard to feel bad for this considering that "Replace your ID with Real ID has been posted in the airport for… 10 years? More? How long does it take to save $20 and get it or pivot to passport? Getting Real ID doesn’t cost $45 in the first place.
In my state everyone got one when our license went up for renewal years ago. I don’t know anyone that doesn’t have a Real ID.
I never got one because my license expired during covid and i didn’t have a recent bill/bank statement (and I had no intention of walking into a DMV at that time) fortunately i do have a passport that i plan to renew as soon as it expires, but my passport is supposed to be for international travel, not domestic.
it wasn’t that long ago that you only needed a birth certificate to travel to the caribbean or a border country. this is getting out of hand.
I use my passport for domestic travel almost always. I come from a small state so it’s just easier than showing the TSA agent a type of license they see maybe a couple of a day and don’t know how to read. Never had an issue.
but my passport is supposed to be for international travel, not domestic.
You can get a passport card so that you don’t need to carry around the book
my understanding os those are only for border states.
Same, I’ve been renewing online for the past 12 years. This year I had to go in and they gave me a hard time over my points. Apparently you can’t have more than one letter from the same government agency. I had 2 from the DMV and was like, “This is literally you guys! Two separate forms. Two separate dates! You don’t trust yourselves enough to get it right more than once!? Like, trust me dude, nobody’s going to the DMV pretending to be me. No sane person would put themselves through that torture just to steal my identity… Nobody wants to be me, it doesn’t come with a whole lot of perks.”
Thankfully, I just had my passport renewed, so I said screw it and got my regular one.
Do you have a recent W2 or tax return with your current address on it? That + valid passport is good in my state.
We still need to go through the process to make sure that we verify who you are
As long as I don’t have any weapons it shouldn’t matter.
but how else will we track where everyone is all the time
Unless you are using a fake ID and fake credit card then they already have that data?
They know John Smith who lives at 123 Main Street in Bumbfuck, WI and who paid with credit card 1234567890123456 is flying from MSN to LAX on December 1st, 2025 and returning via the same route on December 3rd, 2025.
The RealID requirements are to, theoretically, streamline the process of matching person to face with more standardized ID requirements. Like all ID related legislature there is good and bad there.
But if your focus is on The Man tracking you? This changes nothing unless you are already actively committing fraud at MANY levels.
have you ever heard of this neat concept, called freedom?
neat. there is no reason they even need an id. do you need one to gain access to the highways?
Most highways are publicly accessible (and still log you with a Flock™ camera anyway…). But if you want to use the priority lane in states like Colorado? Yeah, they need to scan your pass and they very much do.
The ID still matches the face/body to the Person. Its no different than checking if you are the person with a reservation at a hotel. That said, you can bet there is work in place to not actually need it through a mix of facial ID and profiling.
that’s my point. outside of a thin lane or three, which is probably considerable “private” - public infra should be accessible. Last I checked (abt six months ago) I did not need to show ID to hop on the brewster line into grand central.
it’s all just a cash grab and control theater / normalization at airports. there is nothing special about flying compared to trains, except of course: profit.
I did not need to show ID to hop on the brewster line into grand central.
Because those are public roads. Not high priority roads you pay for access to. Just like fully government funded buses and the like don’t care if you have a ticket or not. Whereas those that are only subsidized tend to still require a pass/ticket/payment.
Also I’ll just point out: Your car has a license plate. It is trivial to read those with an overhead camera. And, depending on the road/day, you can bet a cop will gladly run you down if they spot you have no license plate or decide they care about the polarized screen you put on top of it. At which point you can bet they’ll want to see your ID and won’t take “I am a sovereign citizen and this is a public road” as an answer.
there is nothing special about flying compared to trains
And you need to tie your body to your ticket when you get on a train. We tend to not care anywhere near as much about security with trains (because everyone knows bombs and box cutters only work if you are at least 100 feet above the ground!), but you can be damned sure the ticket machine where you inserted your cash took a picture of your face to go with it.
I genuinely don’t care about what kind of libertarian nonsense you are on about hating the concept of IDs at all. My point was simply that if you think the RealID requirement has ANY bearing on The Man knowing where you are and where you are going then… you don’t actually understand what your exposure is.
And the VIP lane on the highway is a private road?
Whats next, HOV Lane brought to you by Carl’s Jr.?
Stop normalizing the surveillance state. It’s not a good look.
i should have clarified: “access” meant physical meatspace access not allowance.
Plenty of people are flying on tickets purchased by a corporation.
I suspect this is what the payment requirement is really about. Like, yes they’re getting money, but they’re also getting a credit card transaction at the gate at the date and time of travel.
It’s always possible that someone else purchased your travel ticket for you (for instance I sometimes travel for work which my employer’s travel agency books for me). But if you have to pay at the moment when your ID would be checked, presumably that has to be your personal card that you have on you in the moment.
My understanding is that most airlines will still allow you to pay, in cash, at the customer service desk in the baggage area the day of. But they still require ID and you can be DAMNED sure that about forty different flags went off in a database if you do that.
But yeah. Credit cards are immensely useful. They also go a LONG way towards providing very trackable behaviors for people.
A meme of jd vance is the most dangerous weapon of all
Oh shit I’m cooked
It would only make sense if it was a one time fee, and you got your ID as a result.
We also know it’s not about security, or you couldn’t fly without one.
We know it’s a cash grab because they’re counting on a “built-in” amount of flyers who won’t have or will refuse to get ID with privacy issues. If, by some anomaly, more or all flyers acquire the ID, then we’d see maintenance fees added and the fee itself increased to maintain revenue certainty - but who are we kidding, those things will eventually happen anyways.
I was under the impression real id was required to fly. This article is the first hint I’ve seen that it’s not. I wonder if that changed recently?
Or passport. I fly fairly regularly for work and don’t have a “REAL ID” star on my license
Don’t you have to renew like once every 10 years? Real ID has been a thing for awhile, can you even renew without getting it?
I think I have three years until it expires, so at that point I’ll have to get it. Not worried about it until then
It’s still optional in some states, and it’s hard for some people to get since it requires extra residency proof and a birth certificate or naturalization papers.
I’ve barely kept track of it, but I think it kept getting knocked down by courts?
My guess is the intent was always revenue…not security. Security was just the pretext for new revenue, because margins are thin and there’s a certain proportion of people who will pay to prioritize privacy.
It would only make sense if it was a one time fee, and you got your ID as a result.
You can pay a one time fee and get your REAL ID any time you want by going to your local DMV.
We also know it’s not about security, or you couldn’t fly without one.
You’re not supposed to be flying without one (or a valid passport) now. All they’re doing with this policy is potentially making it possible if you’re willing to pay an extra fee and wait (potentially several hours) while they do a background check. Even then there’s no guarantee you’re going to be let on the flight.
We know it’s a cash grab because they’re counting on a “built-in” amount of flyers who won’t have or will refuse to get ID with privacy issues.
IMO it’s not a cash grab it’s an incentive to get with the program by getting the proper documentation.
The whole thing is stupid but I don’t believe it’s a cash grab.
You’re just repeating information from the article.
It’s definitely a cash grab, and also a privacy invasion. It’s a cash grab because it would be much cheaper & easier to standardize state ID requirements and use the existing infrastructure, rather than issue an entirely new ID through an entirely new database controlled by the feds. The states certainly view this as a revenue source…and the feds view it as an “information” source.
It should be noted that, to my knowledge, all the “non-compliant” states (where you can’t use state ID in place of Real ID) are States that are controlled by Democrats, so there’s an additional layer of shenanigans that appears partisan.
My good person I’ve been tracking this whole REAL ID mess since before it was passed back in 2005. Please read my entire comment before replying and let me clarify a few things for you:
I’ll start by saying that a “REAL ID” isn’t a separate ID card. It’s a regular ID, typically a Drivers License or State ID, that was created in compliance with the REAL ID Act. If you want to know what the criteria are you can read them here. (PDF Warning)
It’s a cash grab because it would be much cheaper & easier to standardize state ID requirements and use the existing infrastructure…
Yes and this is one of the things that the REAL ID Act of 2005 did! It created a standardized set of ID requirements that leveraged the individual States existing infrastructure for creation. You are apparently unknowingly arguing for people to follow the regular process and get a REAL ID! The process described in this article is for individuals who either choose to or cannot go through the regular process. I have more information on this farther down.
…rather than issue an entirely new ID through an entirely new database controlled by the feds.
That is a exceptionally strained way to describe what is happening. If an individual doesn’t have a REAL compliant ID or a Passport then they can to go the TSA website and pay a $45 fee for a one time background check. If / when that background check is completed they are given a token that they can present to the TSA Agent at the gate and that token is only valid for 10 days. This is not another form of ID, it’s proof of a recent background check.
The states certainly view this as a revenue source…
Please explain how a state gets any additional revenue from this process. All of the money for this temporary background check is going to the Federal Government.
…and the feds view it as an “information” source.
While you aren’t wrong this is going to impact less than 5% of travelers so there’s not much information to be gathered and the feds already have most of it anyway.
It should be noted that, to my knowledge, all the “non-compliant” states (where you can’t use state ID in place of Real ID) are States that are controlled by Democrats…
Here is the “farther down” I referenced earlier. Let’s start with the fact that all 50 States were issuing compliant REAL IDs by September of 2020.
So there is no state where what you are saying is true and there hasn’t been for at least 5 years. Every State has the ability to issue identification that is compliant with the REAL ID standard it’s just that some States choose to continue issuing IDs that don’t. Even California which was recently in the news about this started issuing REAL IDs back in 2018, it’s just that many people either did not or could not get them.
Even today some States, such as California, will issue both compliant and non-compliant ID cards and which of them a person gets depends entirely on what they want or can qualify for. If an individual qualifies for a REAL compliant ID and wants it then they can get one. If they can’t qualify for or don’t want a REAL compliant ID then they can get a Standard ID.
…so there’s an additional layer of shenanigans that appears partisan.
That’s what you’ve been told but it isn’t true. You may be surprised to learn that some of the very last States to start issuing REAL compliant ID’s were Red States! Oklahoma for example didn’t start issuing them until two years after California! Not only that but many of the Red States that fought REAL ID, Oklahoma, Arizona, South Carolina and Idaho to name a few, also still issue “Standard” IDs just like California and other Blue States!
The truth is that the REAL ID Act was passed 20 years ago and enforcement dates were known about literally years in advance. This fight isn’t new nor is it Red vs Blue. I never liked the REAL ID Act but I like the recent hyper-partisan misinformation hysteria surrounding it even less.
This latest thing from the TSA is just a way for people who don’t have or can’t get a REAL compliant ID or US Passport to fly domestically. It’s not an information gathering conspiracy nor is it a revenue generator, it’s just another sad and stupid act in the Security Theater that is the TSA.
You haven’t really engaged with anything I said. You’re just repeating more inform from the article and what is generally known.
It is a fact that, rather than simply bringing existing ID into “compliance” (some are, and some aren’t - and for a reason you haven’t sufficiently explained these non compliant states appear to be Democratic) there is an entire new system being superimposed that, which you like it or not, was sold to the states as a revenue source. Additionally, the feds are collecting massive amounts of data that was formerly considered private.
I paid for a real id license when they were first available in my state, and I’ve paid for a renewal. I disagree with the surveillance society they enable but I’m also a realist who wants to travel conveniently.
But I’ve still never gotten one. When it comes down to it, actually getting a real id license requires taking a day off work and waiting in line at the Registry …… whereas I can renew a standard license online and have a few years left on my passport
One of the many ways RealID has been a fiasco is RMV/DMV’s not staffing up to support it
I’m in a backass hillbilly state but I just made an appointment at the DMV and then had to wait all of 5 minutes when I got there. But, then they tried to argue every single piece of paper I brought which involved calls to supervisors so it wound up being a 40 minute ordeal. I swear they don’t want you to actually get it.
when I was like “hey can I do my REAL ID real quick now too?” to the DMV agent I was renewing my registration with, he literally laughed at me 🤣. It’s like 90% the effort of getting a full-blown passport, at least with the documentation they make you give in my state…
While this is ridiculous. The original requirement date for a real id was 2008. It has been 20 years since real id was passed. You have had 20 years to get one.
Dude it was hard enough for my wife to get a new ID (not REAL) when we moved from RI to MA.
I do all the bills and handle all the finances. My credit was better (now we are about equal) and so all the utilities and most the credit cards are in my name. Not to mention most of them are paperless.
At the time, I think she was also still on a cell phone plan with her siblings.
So, like, absolutely no official-enough mail coming to our house to her name. And they need 2.
What, exactly, is the purpose of an ID, and why does it need my SSN and two pieces of mail? How does that identify me, as a person, any more than a supporting document like an existing US Passport? If I qualified for a US Passport, why the hell do I need so much more on top of that for just a state issued ID.
The whole thing is a scam to bully minorities and put an additional burden on traveling for low-income families. I wonder how many people are missing flights to some important and unexpected event (i.e. a funeral) because they never fly and never had a reason to get a REAL ID.
For that matter, I’d really like to know what TSA gets out of a REAL ID that they don’t get out of a regular license, for domestic travel? They don’t care about my proof of residence, they only care that the name matches the boarding pass and the face, and isn’t Islamic or otherwise off-white.
How long until they require it to vote so it shuts out a majority of the voters from participating in elections?
Shhh… You’re saying the quiet parts out loud.
You know your wife could use a passport to fly, right?
And she did, last time we flew. Domestically. Which is absurd.
No other real reason to make a special trip to the RMV just to upgrade the license. Certainly not to pay a fee to get it and still keep the same expiration date on her license. So not even extending it.
My state didn’t start offering them until 2018, and our IDs are good for 5 years. Also, our DVS was a complete shitshow at the time with regular licenses taking up to 6 months to arrive, and double that for a real id. People avoided them so they wouldn’t have to renew a temporary license every 3 months.
Realistically, people in my state have had an average of one opportunity to get a real id on renewal.
My state had extremely limited appointments for Real ID applications. Then they casually offered an “upgrade” when I went to add an endorsement in 2021 because they went to no-walk-in appointment system and suddenly had all the time in the world on their hands
Wtf is a real id
A state ID with stricter vetting. They’re needed for access to some government facilities, commercial flights, and nuclear power plants. If you never fly, you don’t really need one.
“Stricter”, yeah, because uncertified mail is such an ironclad ID support document. 🙄
oh so it was never about security.
The agency warns that even then, there is no guarantee that individuals will be cleared to cross through the security checkpoint.
Bummer, that’s another $45 to re-check until they get it right. I’m guessing this will happen a lot.
I mean that’s obvious. Otherwise you’re just paying $45 to ignore the security checkpoint if you’re guaranteed to get through with payment.
It’s far from obvious these days that the US wouldn’t apply a mandatory straight-up bribe to its government services. It’d just be a smaller-scale version of Trump’s “gold card” visa.
