Keep up the good work!

Actually, it’s not a loophole, and whether you actually have ID or not does not matter. There is no requirement that travelers show ID to government agents before boarding a domestic flight in the United States. I received notice of such from
Jeanne Oliver, Associate Director, TSA Office of the Executive Secretariat in March, 2008. A PDF of that document is available in a post to the Identity Project blog (”ID Still Not Required To Fly” March 31, 2008).

Interestingly, as recently as December, 2007, TSA signs at the Kansas City International Airport inaccurately state otherwise.

Also, note that while the Kansas City Star article (“Although airport security tells passengers they must show ID to board planes, they really don’t,” Scott Canon and Mike Rice, Kansas City Star, April 9, 2008) has been removed from their Web site, the story is also available at the Seattle Times and also at the Arizona Daily Star.

Requiring us to present our papers to a government agent who will determine based on our identities whether or not we may travel would be equivalent to requiring us to request permission to travel. (Thankfully, there is still no requirement that passengers on domestic flights identify themselves to TSA agents.) As long as I am not carrying anything dangerous, the United States government should get out of the way and leave whether or not I’ll be flying up to me and the airline with whom I have contracted to transport me to my destination.

Paraphrasing words of The Identity Project: No matter how sophisticated the security embedded into an I.D., a well-funded criminal will be able to falsify it. Honest people, however, go to Pro-Life rallies. Honest people go to Pro-Choice rallies, too. Honest people attend gun shows. Honest people protest the actions of the President of the United States. Honest people fly to political conventions. What if those with the power to put people on a ‘no fly’ list decided that they didn’t like the reason for which you wanted to travel? The honest people wouldn’t be going anywhere.

Over 900,000 names are now on the United States’ so-called “terrorist watch list”. Presumably, the people named on that list have neither done wrong nor attempted to do wrong, or else they would be arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced by a judge to punishment for their wrongdoing. If someone’s name is placed on the list, there is no way for him to find out why it was placed there and there is no process for appealing the decision to place it there. Placement on the list is an administrative punishment dealt anonymously.