Just heard from my boss that TSA will require driver’s licenses to be REAL ID complaint to fly in 2020. The identifying mark will be a star on the top right of the ID.
Hmmm…remember the last time a star was used to identify people??? :eek:
This again? It’s been happening next year since the Bush administration, and has been delayed every time. Though nearly every state is now in compliance, so maybe they’ll actually do it this time.
Which states aren’t in compliance yet?
Will some of us get a pink triangle?
WA, for one. We were having all kinds of PSA’s a few months ago. Now, nothing.
The star does not identify the person, it identifies the license as being REAL ID compliant. The person is not “REAL ID” compliant. The ID is. If the star actually identified something about the person as opposed to the ID itself, you might have a point. Should we just avoid star shapes altogether for the rest of civilization? I heard Hitler wore shoes. We shouldn’t wear shoes anymore.
At any rate, if you don’t want to use an ID card with a star on it, you don’t have to. The TSA will still accept a passport book or passport card, just as they always have. No yellow stars on those. And it’s not just the TSA. It’s every Federal agency–to include the military. A license will not be acceptable to enter a military installation unless it is RealID compliant. So, if you want to drive on a military base for an Air Show after 2020, and your license is not RealID compliant, you will need your license and a passport. A few years ago, before the amnesty period was extended, there was a problem with friends and family from states RealID non-compliant states visiting their relatives on military bases. They weren’t allowed to enter without a passport.
Alaska only got on board last month. A few years ago, before the federal government extended the amnesty period, in addition to the small problem with friends and family visiting as previously mentioned, there was a much larger problem in the fact that Alaskans could not enter the base without a passport. Soldiers could no longer bring their dates on to post. Certain civilian workers could not enter post. The problem didn’t last long, as the amnesty period was extended in short order.
Pennsylvania just began offering compliant driver’s licenses. They’re a pain in the ass to get, so I’ll just use my passport. You’d think a passport would be enough to qualify for the new DL, but it’s not.
Why would someone think that? A passport doesn’t prove residency and doesn’t have your SSN on it. The passport is enough to prove who you are, but you will need another document(s) to prove where you reside. You should present proof of SSN as well, but they do allow you to simply sign an affidavit swearing that your SSN is in fact the number you’ve given.
According to this site, these states have been given extensions through October 10, 2019:
New Jersey
Oklahoma
Oregon
Kentucky
Maine
But why do you need proof of residency and your SSN to interact with the federal government using a drivers license but not a passport? Surely, to upgrade your drivers license to passport-level validity, a passport should be sufficient.
Exactly.
So, I’ll just use my passport for domestic flights.
You don’t.
Every states’ driver’s license contains an address. The Federal Government basically told the states that, since they’ve been including this information on the license, they need to start actually verifying the information. The Federal government doesn’t need your proof of residency on an ID in order to interact with them. All they require is a federally valid ID. That could be a passport book, a passport card, or a military ID card. None of those contain an address.
Since there is no Federal ID card, and since state driver licenses have become the de facto ID cards across the country, the federal government has agreed to accept them as valid forms of identification, provided the information on them is actually validated by the state. If every state ID card and license did not already include an address, then that requirement would likely not have been included in the legislation. Since every state included an address on its license, the federal government simply required them to verify it. It seems reasonable to me.
Yes, what, exactly, is the purpose of making sure the federal government knows where you live? (And can’t that change the day after you get the driver’s license?) And why is social security number needed for anything other than being paid?
This seems like a very stupid regulation, unless i am missing something big.
But why are they basing acceptance on validation of information they don’t use?
Either the verified address is an important security measure that should be mandatory on all compliant documents, or it’s not and you shouldn’t need to bring all that BS to the DMV to get a REAL ID license. The fact that you can be accepted into the higher tier of citizenship, eligible to do exalted functions like use mass transit and visit public property, without verifying your address means it’s not actually necesssary.
The federal government does not care, and they would be more than happy for everyone to just use a Passport Card as their identification card. There is no reason to get a State ID card at all.
However, if someone wants to drive a vehicle, they will need a state driver’s license. For various reasons, including knowing where to send tickets, states require an address. People who want to use their State-level identification to interact with the federal government need to have an ID that conforms to the same level of scrutiny as one obtained from the federal government. When forcing all of the states to conform to a standard for authenticating the identity of its card holders, the feds basically said, "Oh, and that other information you’re putting on the card (ie. the address) needs to be validated as well.
I’m not sure the actual purpose of providing an SSN. But I know that you don’t actually have to present the card to obtain a RealID.
They’re not. If that information were not already included on the license/ID card of all 50 states, it likely would not have been part of the RealID requirements.
But, since every single state has that information, the federal government said the states need to verify it.
You guys seem to be looking at the whole situation like this:
“The federal government will not accept a state ID card unless it has a verified address on it! That’s crazy, because there isn’t even an address on my passport.”
That’s not really what’s going on here. The federal government is refusing to accept a state ID card unless it is RealID compliant, because that’s the only way to ensure that state has used the same federal-level standards of identifying the ID holder. It just happens to be a coincidence that RealID compliant licenses and IDs also include a residency address (because states what to track that information), and that address had to be confirmed because the feds don’t want unconfirmed information on the RealIDs.
Start here:
Does the state have a legitimate reason to maintain your residency address in their database? I can think of several legitimate reasons. I think you can as well, so I will move on to the next point.
Since the state requires that information, the state IDs and licenses have that information on them.
Some people want to use their state level ID to interact with the federal government.
The federal government has proclaimed, “Okay. We will accept your state ID card, provided you actually verify the information. If you can’t conform to these minimal standards of verification, then your ID cards are suspect, and we can’t trust them.”
The feds also mandated certain security features and anti-counterfeiting measures, that further ensure the ID holder is the person he/she claims to be. An ID card that is not RealID compliant may or may not have these same security standards. So the federal government will not accept it. It’s not the address they care about.
My passport does have my address in it. I wrote it in by hand, in the place provided, after it was issued. No one verified it.
It was incredibly useful, however, when I accidentally left my passport in a cab, after returning from an international trip. The cab driver turned it over to the police, and they wrote me a letter.
So “you need to verify everything there” doesn’t seem to be a requirement for federal ID, and seems stupid for “real ID”. I imagine it’s also a problem for people who don’t have fixed homes, and perhaps for people who are dependants or guests and don’t have bills sent to their place of residence.
Yes, the Real ID regulations do say that the Real ID regulations are sensible and logical and correct. It would be surprising if they didn’t.
This discussion reminds me of conversations with gun buyers that I used to have back when I sold firearms. Before RealID legislation, The ATF Form 4473 required that only that I verify the purchaser via a valid, government-issued photo identification card. The key word there is “valid”. In many states, the driver’s license becomes invalid 10 days after a change of address, if the card is not updated to reflect the new address. That license could not be used for identification. But, a government-photo identification card that didn’t even contain an address could be used instead.
Here is a fable to illustrate the point:
I once had a situation where the person’s address on the form did not match the address on his license. When questioned, he admitted that he hadn’t had a chance to update it in the last month. I explained to him that I would not be able to use that license to identify him, and asked if he had any other means of identification with his picture on it.
He happened to have a pool pass issued by the city. The pool pass included his picture, had not expired, and was issued by the city government. Even though it was a cheaply constructed of laminated paper, was hand-written (not typed or computer generated), and the edges were separating, it was still a (1)valid, (2)government-issued, (3)photo identification. It did not contain an address, so it didn’t matter that his address had changed since being issued the pool pass. I was able to sell him the firearm and complete the form using the pool pass instead of the driver license.