Yeah, at the expense of my civil liberties. You do realize that you have to do a background check and an interview to get that, right? Whereas when I was a child you didn't have to do any of that to enjoy the right to keep your belt and your shoes on at the airport.
Now, I have Global Entry (which includes TSA Pre).
I rationalized it in a few ways:
* "The Government" already has all the information GE wants. Finger prints, photo ID, "interview" (answering the question "Are you a terrorist?"). They got nearly all of this when I got a driver's license. (https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a32035408/dmv-selling-...)
* If I'm flying anyway, the airlines already collect (and are legally required to collect) all sorts of personal data that I would rather them not have. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passenger_name_record)
> "The Government" already has all the information GE wants.
Yup. The people I've talked to who failed their GE interviews all failed because they lied and didn't admit to something shady that DHS already knew about them.
That's fair since it's technically not the federal government, but when I moved from Missouri to Colorado in 2019, I had to provide fingerprints in order to get my Colorado driver's license. And as a layman, I would generally assume that means anyone working for government in any part of this country could generally access that info one way or another.
> And as a layman, I would generally assume that means anyone working for government in any part of this country could generally access that info one way or another.
Let me put it this way: I wouldn't choose to leave my fingerprints at a crime scene assuming legal firewalls would prevent me from getting caught that way.
Technically, legally, right now, maybe the Colorado DMV's database isn't accessible to other parties. How strongly are you willing to bet that it's going to stay that way for the rest of your life?
I have never heard of a state drivers license requiring fingerprinting.
I've lived in 5 states in the last 20 years, but none of them were Colorado.
A quick web search suggests that CO requires prints for licensing as an auto or motorsports dealer, but I can't find a requirement for getting a standard DL. I didn't look too hard, and I'm not claiming any authority here, but I remain surprised by the requirement.
"The information here covers identification and lawful presence requirements for Coloradans seeking a driver license, ID card or instruction permit... Per C.R.S. 42-2-107 and 42-2-302, applications for credentials must contain a fingerprint."
CRS 42-2-107 concerns applications for driver's licenses and learner's permits, and CRS 42-2-302 concerns issuance of driver's licenses and non-driving identification cards.
My friends who were already in the state prior to 2017 never needed to get their prints taken to keep renewing their licenses. But since I moved here in 2019, I needed to provide mine, as do any teenagers getting their permits or licenses for the first time here.
That's shocking. And really too bad, because I could have imagined myself living in Colorado. From a distance, I appreciate what I know about their government.
But compulsory fingerprinting is too authoritarian for my tastes. I can still visit, right? :)
Yes, because I did the interview. But then I've done the background check and interview for jobs as well. And honestly, there's a ton of that information about you in computers if you travel by air at all. Don't fly (in particular) if you want to be anonymous.
The U.S. used to take pride in freedom of movement. In fiction, demands for papers were a classic sign of a government gone over the line. Now you need ID even for a Greyhound or Amtrak. I guess you can still walk or ride a bicycle.
I've taken Amtrak quite a bit in the last few years (Emeryville & Truckee in California, and NYC, Philly, BWI, and DC in the east), and I've never been asked for ID to board a train. (In other words, trivially easy for someone to do something nefarious if they wanted to.)
No security checkpoints, no ticket checking before getting on the train, just someone checking tickets on the train itself 10-20 minutes after it gets moving.
You also don't actually need an ID to fly, though if you try that, give yourself plenty of time to get through "extra security".
Funnily enough, a while back (may be different now) I somehow lost my license between the car and the terminal door and didn't have any backup because it was a last minute trip. Guessing it's not the case today post-RealID but I was still able to get through TSA. The kicker though was that I had to go through all sorts of machinations to check into the Travelodge near the airport and pay in cash. Ever since, I use a generally useless global entry ID as identification at the airport and keep my driver's license well secured.
Yeah, similar experiences on both counts in early 2000s. The hotel's refusal to honor a reservation even with cash in advance was part of the new "not the country I grew up in" feeling, those years.
It has more to do with having a credit card on file in case of damages.
And like I said in another reply, the country you grew up in was probably different than the country my still living parents grew up in in the Jim Crow south.
Yes, it was. One thing there seems to be more of is bundling of politics, like "Y is bad" as rejoinder to "X is good" with no necessary link between them.
I think I asked what deposit they would need. It had never been an issue before.
My point isn’t political. But when people wax poetically about how great the US use to be, it definitely wasn’t great even in the 70s for a percentage of people living in the south
I think you still have the right to travel without ID. The TSA may demand it, and may tell you it's legally required, but that doesn't make that true. If you show up at the airport without an ID, you'll still be allowed to fly domestically. Of course, how easy that is probably depends on whether you frame it as a "woops!" or as a "fuck you guys!". They'll put you through extra "security" screening and try to confirm your ID other ways.
"In fact, the TSA does not require, and the law does not authorize the TSA to require, that would-be travelers show any identity documents. According to longstanding practice, people who do not show any identity documents travel by air every day – typically after being required to complete and sign the current version of TSA Form 415 and answer questions about what information is contained in the file about them obtained by the TSA from data broker Accurint…."
That reads basically like "if you seem cooperative enough with our extra effort to check your identity, we'll probably let you through". That's just a very different country from "you need greenbacks to buy a ticket over the counter."
Similarly though admittedly more permissive, with Amtrak iirc it's like: you need a credit card and they probably won't check your ID. There were several more years after 9/11 before the "papers please" principle came for the trains and buses too.
If you walk onto the train with a ticket you printed, I don't think I've ever been asked for an ID. I might if I were picking up a ticket at the station.
You definitely need ID for hotels a lot of the time. Not sure the level where the regulations are put in place--probably varies--and Europe is probably more formal than the US in this regard. Was staying with a friend in Europe about a year ago and they had to take our passports to the police station to make us "official."
As I wrote elsewhere, I also had a challenge in the US a few years back but I expect that, had I been at my usual chain, there would have been a discussion with the manager followed by "I see nothing, I hear nothing."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aircraft_hijacking cites two figures for the U.S. rate of hijacking attempts near its peak. The higher one is "Between 1968 and 1977, there were approximately 41 hijackings per year." meaning once per 9 days, an order of magnitude below yours. The other is once per 13.3 days over 1968-72. If both Wikipedia numbers are reliable then the peak must be somewhat higher than 1/9 in 73-77.
I already said ID is not security. How many 70s hijackers got away unidentified? How many would not have even tried if they also had to show ID? I can think of one case, "D. B. Cooper".
This conversation just doesn't seem promising. Your initial wildly-off claim got me worried I might misunderstand the world by that much (I remember the 70s, fuzzily). I wasted time checking it, wondering if the actual peak might be in a year not mentioned, trying to find the paper Wikipedia cited: it was a non-open-access paper with at least four links to check; one of them did show the first page, which at least gave the figure in question, if not the ultimate source.
Are we talking about the same US that didn’t allow my parents to attend certain schools, drink from the same water fountain, forced them to be in the back of a theater, and had separate colleges?
