Beginning in October, 2020…
Because it’s going to take effect in a little over a year, and unless you’ve recently renewed your driver’s license, you might not have been aware of the new restrictions. I hadn’t heard about this until about a year ago. I find it kind of… appalling. In some ways, the USA is becoming more and more like the USSR.
I think the states are misreading Trump’s mandate. Only the Jews are supposed to wear the gold stars. He found the idea in his Constitution, which is subtitled The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
No need to be worried. he probably won’t come for you next.
I suppose this is a move agains Huawei. Or Samsung.
howabout the Feds just give us an ID, if they want us to have an ID with specific features? why can we never do things the simple, direct way, here?
oh, right. lead-addled republicans whine too loudly when sensible things are proposed.
With the ubiquitous cameras and high-speed connections everybody has now, they should be able to scan our fingerprints, our irises, our retinas, and our facial structure every time we pass through a security gate. It should be trivial to determine who we are, whether we wanted them to or not. Nobody should have to carry an ID token around ever again.
I can’t say what CDG was doing immediately after the shoe bomber incident, but I’ve flown out of that airport roughly 70 times in the last 10 years and the only times I’ve ever been asked to remove my shoes is if the metal detector went off (and usually not even then, they’re pretty quick to go to the handheld wands).
Hmm… October 2020… Now what was that little thing that was supposed to happen in November 2020?
Meh, it probably wasn’t important.
Around here because the CA DMV fucked up their Real ID implementation badly and got around to issuing Real IDs only last year, and for a while the Trump administration wanted to punish CA for that and for issuing DL to undocumented residents by reneging on the agreement and making them redo everything.
There’s more to Real ID than doc requirements. It standardizes DL implementations in all 50 states and requires states to share information so the feds can track all DL activity, not just air travel.
I might be getting things mixed up, but it feels like the shoes thing varies even with US airports. Some require you to take your shoes off and some not. I assume it has to do with the sensitivity of the metal detectors more than anything else.
There’s never a sign up about it or anything and the TSA agents are always annoyed when I get it wrong.
It doesn’t matter so much what would win, or what you and I think would win. What matters is what the pols fear might lose.
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The thing that gets me is the circularity of the whole identity document game. To renew my Maryland driver’s license earlier this year, I had to come in with a birth certificate. To order a copy of my birth certificate fron New Hampshire, I had to provide them with a photocopy of my current (non0Real ID) MD Driver’s license. So I really don’t see how this process should provide ANY more confidence that I am the person that I claim to be.
edited to add. To be a little more obvious, having the vital records dept of NH see a photocopy of my non-compliant license really does not add any more security than having MD’s Motor Vehicle Administration review my ACTUAL license in person. After all, a photocopy of a forged license would be much more difficult to detect.
My guess: theatre, creating the illusion of security.
Travelling mainly in Europe, I never take my shoes off (though I wear trainers (sneakers)) but always take my belt off as I know it’ll trigger the scanner. Honestly though, airport security in the UK is an absolute breeze.
My kid got a notice from the state of Kentucky months ago, telling her to bring a passport when she renews her DL in order to get a RealD license. She did, last week, and they said, “Oh, we can’t do that yet. Only a couple of counties in the whole state are doing this now.” Well, my kid has a passport, but this sucks for all the other Kentuckians who don’t, and will need to fly to, say, a funeral before the system is implemented statewide… if it ever is. It’s not easy to come up with money for a plane ticket and $150 for a passport for most folks.
I think you are suggesting that my comment was intended to express a desire that there be no discussion of this matter. This is a misunderstanding that is entirely my fault—I probably didn’t think about what I was saying long enough, and worded it wrong (I was tired).
My intent was to raise the question of why we’re only talking about it now. Or to put it another way: I find it surprising that it took 14 years for people in media (like Xeni) to start sounding the alarm about this.
This is not a criticism of the discussion, or an attempt to invalidate how folks feel about the matter. It is a desire to learn more about what went wrong in communication (and spread awareness that something went wrong): why are people only just now learning about this? In other words, by asking “why is this news?” I was trying to ask “why wasn’t this news before today?”
Now that that is cleared up, I’ll address your questions.
First of all, things that are not news are always allowed to be discussed, of course.
Second, I do not know when the cut-off for news to become “olds” is, but there must be some period of time after which a fact that has been public (like the passage of a law) is no longer new information to the public.
Old information can still be discussed, but I do find it odd when old information is treated like new information, which is what precipitated my question. And I don’t mean I find it odd that people who were previously unaware of the matter find it new (it is, obviously, new to them), but I find it odd that it took 14 years for the information to reach them. I’m not blaming those who were unaware, I’m blaming those responsible for making them aware: the government and the media.
Perhaps the cut-off depends on the nature of the information? Maybe because it hasn’t actually affected anyone yet, the news media didn’t consider REAL ID newsworthy, until one year before it begins? I don’t know the answer. But I think most people just learning about this now, and who are upset by it, would have preferred more than a year to take action and try to do something about it.
Frankly, one year before it begins is too late to change anything about it. If you are just learning about the details of REAL ID now, and it disturbs you, then I believe you should also be disturbed that you are only learning about it now. You were deprived of your best opportunity to complain to lawmakers and have the law changed (that opportunity was between 2009 and 2011, when Democrats controlled the House, the Senate, and the Presidency), because you were left in the dark about this for over a decade. That should piss you off.
So, hopefully, you now understand what I, in fewer words, tried (but failed) to get at, in my original comment.
Please see above. Thank you!
It’s your ticket to the (security) theater!
Wait, really? It’s always amused me the level of scrutiny applied to my identification at the airport but my kids simply get asked their names (always wondering, have the TSA never heard of child soldiers?).
Are you telling me that they now need actual ID?
Boing Boing has been covering this issue for years.
[ETA] From 2009:
I meant the whole “gold star” thing.
It’s a new aspect of the same issue they’ve been covering for years, though.
