Effective in January of next year, the driver licenses issued in eight states will no longer be recognized as valid for ID for flying within the US. People who live in those states will have to get other forms of ID. Those states are Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Washington.
Can you share the reasoning behind this change?
Why?
The real ID act of 2005? Well it’s not like those states haven’t had time to get with the program.
I think Oklahoma also has this problem.
And Arizona.
Probably this will be delayed or overturned by Congress.
I think I’ll just make this a sig line:
The Terrorists Have Won.
Do they still have the licenses that don’t expire for decades?
Only twenty-five states are currently in compliance. Seventeen states are in the process of coming into compliance and have been given extensions. (Really guys? You had twelve years.) The remaining eight states haven’t started.
You need ID to fly?
Yes, we do.
Nevermind that the 9/11 terrorists used their actual, real ID’s and had been in the US on valid student visas, those who passed the act somehow had the notion that asking those yahoos for ID’s would have somehow stopped the whole affair. :rolleyes:
Mind you, upgrading the security and anti-tampering/counterfeiting of ID’s probably wasn’t a bad idea in general but the notion this will somehow significantly prevent terrorism is mostly security theater.
I love security theatre! 
I’m sure we will have to do it too sometime. Not yet though, thankfully.
Remember: All the 9/11 hijackers had completely valid, legitimate, IDs. Passports in particular.
A few of them were actually on a warning list and were held up for a bit before being allowed to board.
As mentioned, security theater.
Be prepared to be pulled over for a check.
I believe it started some time in the mid-90s. And, technically, you may be able to fly without ID, but will be subject to more scrutiny and the whims of the agent interviewing you.
With a bonus however. Think about the new federal program that require people to prove their identity to the satisfaction of a government official in order to obtain a valid ID. And now think about the concurrent movement to require people to produce a valid ID in order to vote.
For all its faults and idiosyncrasies, the USA might be the only country in the world in which one is free to walk about in a public place without being required to show papers of identity. That fact itself leads to the variety of different documents that are recognized as forms of identity for special purposes.
Really ? I’ve never been asked for my identity once in Britain, ( apart from opening accounts ) and I’ve never carried identification in any form.
Except for debit cards if I took them along, but I could have stolen them.
Same applies in Denmark, France and other European counties. The idea that America is ‘the only place’ is always deluded crap from boosters.
There are other forms of identification that they will accept. See the list. My state will probably not be in compliance before the deadline, but I always carry my passport card with me so I’ll be good to fly. If I didn’t already have it I’d probably be pissed that I need to get it to be allowed to fly.
The passport card costs $55 to get and is good for travel by land or sea (but not by air) to Canada and Mexico. The passport book is also an acceptable form of ID for the TSA but costs more and is less convenient to carry around.
And Canada. Yes, just nonsense.