We have a national ID card. It’s called a passport.
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Notice the cold, uncaring eyes.
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Is it just me, or is that info graphic useless, because the shades of blue are all way too close together?
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Apparently, they aren’t always accepted as a “proper” form of ID, although, of course it is.
But we’re really just back to attempts to control our movements via little pieces of paper, either way.
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@William_Holz said “free.” As in not costing a $110 application fee and a $25 ‘execution fee’.
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ORLY? Looks pretty white to me. Maybe it’s just “pro-“life”” or mentally I’ll. Er somethin’
I would think that this was not literal would be so obvious that it would not need remarking upon. I did specify acting against their infrastructure. It does not seem to be much of a leap to suggest that such a group uses some operational infrastructure.
If you aren’t sure, then why jump to that conclusion? How does a question equal advocacy? What violence was described? Think about it, answer the question in your own mind, instead of assuming that it is asking or saying something else.
It sounds to me that you are trying to make this out to be a personal matter, so no, I am not going along with that.
My reasoning for the question is that it seems obvious that why people put up with the TSAs inconsistencies and meddling is because it has direct consequences upon them, as travellers. So arguing their purpose or methods at the airline gate gives the TSA all of the leverage. So, perhaps a more effective approach would be to confront them when one is not travelling, just as a small act of civic duty in one’s daily life. This can turn it from impotent complaining into something with >gasp< real consequences.
If the only form of forceful action people can think of is violence, I would say that is rather sad. How about disrupting their finances, transportation, facilities? There are countless things people can do which don’t involve violence. Governments themselves are often violent, so I am reluctant to assume that the TSA or other groups are victims here. They are using force against their own people, their employers, and so long as people accept this instead of confronting it in kind and demanding accountability, then it seems likely to continue.
Given the shape of things, it would never be free and it would end up being run through the states. The only reason passports aren’t is because they can’t be.
I get a lot of kids at the library asking why we need something official with their name and address, when they can just tell us their address. A. Most of them can’t. B. We have had too many who used someone else’s information and stole items and racked up large fines. C. When we’ve just met, I have no idea what category you will fall in and sadly, those who I have met will often fall under A or B as well.
And no, they aren’t exceptions because they are children. Or teenagers. Or young adults, etc. Not being able to understand the need for an ID is kind of silly. I just worry about the addition of a chip with everything, when we’re shown over and over again how easy information can be accessed from such things.
The B. could be solved by a safety deposit. Do not allow borrowing above the value of the deposit, subtract fines. Stealing identity and running with the books will then become uneconomical.
I tried to find one that was lizard shaped, but my three seconds of googling didn’t show anything 
Edit
Oh, here we go. Muslin terrorist lizard person, just like our prez.
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@William_Holz There are a variety of arguments for why it would be bad to have a national ID. Most are based on libertarian or civil libertarian notions that it gives the government additional ways to track and control citizens, and does little or nothing to advance citizens’ rights (on the contrary, it places burdens on citizens to pay for its implementation and to comply with the requirements that it enables). It also turns DMVs into de facto immigration enforcement offices.
REAL ID in particular is opposed by folks from across the political spectrum, including the ACLU, CATO, EFF, EPIC, and a variety of immigrants’ rights organizations.
The main proponents are Homeland Security, anti-illegal-immigration activists, etc.
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Your peppers, please!
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I always thought ID-matching-passenger nonsense was something the airlines wanted, or at the very least were happy about. Pre ID requirements, if “Joe” got sick and couldn’t fly to the conference in Denver, you could just give the ticket to “Bob”. Now, that’s not allowed and the airlines profit from this. Maybe not much, but since when do airlines care how much more additional profit they can squeeze out of the flying public.
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Minnesota is included in the “about to be punished” list despite being in a different category, but New Mexico isn’t even though it is in the same boat as Washington, Missouri, Illinois, etc.
My Passport? NO way am I going to carry my 500GB portable drive around just so they can paw it over.
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Yes, the airlines’ revenue protection units were quite happy to implement ID checks to prevent folks from transferring tickets. In fact, for a few years after 9/11, the ID checks at the security checkpoints weren’t conducted by TSA, but were conducted by airline contractors and merely involved a visual check to see if the name on the boarding pass handed to the airline contractor matched the ID. They served no real security purpose, since it was trivial for a bad guy (even one on the no-fly list) to use a fake ID or fake boarding pass to get through security.
Nowadays it’s still a joke, but less of a joke. TSA handles the ID checks themselves and use scanners to verify that boarding passes are legit. They also require the airlines to collect passengers’ birthdates, genders and middle names and supposedly have a system in place (or are developing one) to match that info to the IDs that are checked. But the fact that many states don’t give the Feds access to state ID databases makes it harder for them to verify the authenticity of the IDs they are checking, which is why they want REAL ID.
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Our DNA is already a bar code, isn’t it?
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I have a better idea, shut DHS down. Let’s start with there budget.
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