TSA require your U.S. driver's license to have a star to fly in 2020...

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
101

That’s absurd. Why did my tobacco-smoking grandfather live to be 93 and never get lung cancer?

Nobody said that everybody has trouble getting their birth certificates. But because some people have them doesn’t mean that everybody has them or even can easily get them.

When anyone first gets a driver’s license, they’re clearly informed that they need to have that on them when driving. When anyone gets a car, they’re clearly informed that they need to keep that documentation with the car or with whoever’s driving it. Getting pulled over is a real possibility in any driver’s life; it happens to just about everybody occasionally. Until very recently, nobody in the USA expected to need to show anybody their birth certificate, let alone their marriage license, or proof of the exact spelling of their name – my bank accounts, at different banks, recognized two significantly different versions of my name until the laws changed after 2001. The very idea of being expected to show your documents, during most of my life (and I’m a good bit younger than your aunt), was considered a hallmark of totalitarian societies, and not anything USA citizens expected to do. Driver’s licenses were an exception to that because most people agreed you needed training and functional eyesight to drive a car, and could lose the right if you drove badly enough.

So everybody who drives (which a lot of people don’t) expects to need to have their driver’s license on hand. But most people didn’t expect to need most of the documentation you’re now being required to have to renew it (and not only to renew it to drive, but to travel by other means, or to go into buildings they may have good reason to enter.) Some people keep things even if they don’t expect to need them. Many people don’t. Even people who intend to keep things lose them – the moving company lost a box, the roommate who moved out took the wrong box, somebody cleaning the place up tossed a batch of old papers without checking each one to see if it might be wanted later, the house burned down.

Plus which, driver’s licenses get renewed every few years, and are also on file with the state’s motor vehicle office. If one is lost or stolen – and yes, those things do both happen – there’s a clear specific place, still in existence, with a clear specific procedure for replacement. A birth certificate may have been on file in an office that burned down fifty years ago, or was blown up in a war zone. Or it may be filed in a different municipality than expected. (The location on mine isn’t where we were living, it’s where the hospital was. And not everyone even knows where their family was living when they were born.)

102

Actually, these days, with tons of information on line, officer friendly will likely cut you some slack if you have a valid license but don’t have it on you. And I know from personal experience that misplacing the registration isn’t a big deal. I have no idea how the registration got lost (it lives in the glove compartment) but a couple years ago I was pulled over and couldn’t find it. The officer did cite me for speeding (I was) but he just looked up my registration and gave me advice on how to obtain a new copy.

Yeah, I’m a middle aged white woman driving in a nice neighborhood, in my home town. I could have gotten in trouble. But you did mention Officer Friendly.

And as thorny locust said, the last time I needed my birth certificate was when I got my first passport. That was mumble mumble decades ago. I think I have a birth certificate in the safety deposit box, but I’m not actually certain of that. I have literally never needed the social security card. I used to carry a hand-written card with the number on it, but eventually I learned the number and stopped carrying the card. I used that hand-written card to fill out paperwork for my first few jobs, though.

“Show me your papers” was how we knew who the bad guys were in movies and TV shows when I was a kid. I’m not relishing this modern fascist age of the government tracking our every move.

103

And yes, I realize the with the proliferation of web-enabled cameras and on-line databases that dozens (maybe hundreds) of entities are tracking our every move. Of course the government wants to, too. And on some level, why shouldn’t it have that info, if Google, Facebook, and the local supermarket chain all have it. But when it starts to interfere with getting on with my life, I’m going to complain. And yes, real id will give me trouble. I have enough bills mailed to my residence that that should be okay, but if they actually want documentation of my social security number, that will be a project.

Oh, and I use different names in different places. My passport has four full names. My current driver’s license has two names and one initial. My employer has three names My bank actually messed up and stored my middle name as the first part of my last name. (Think Jane Smith Jones, and they think my last name is “Smith Jones”, while my legal surname is just “Jones”.) There are other versions floating around, too.

This is going to be fun. If I could imagine how it would make anyone safer, I might be okay with it. But I see no benefit to anyone. It’s security theater, not security.

104

I find it astonishing that anyone could say this with a straight face.

105

Yeah, it is rather hard to imagine the thought processes of a person that would make that argument.

New rule: everyone must produce a photo of the first house they lived in after they were born. What do you mean you don’t have one? My 89 year old aunt has one!

I do have a copy of both my birth certificate and my Social Security card, but I certainly wouldn’t think it at all strange if someone didn’t. How often do you need either of those? I think the only time I used my birth certificate when I got my passport, and I don’t think I’ve ever used my SS card.

106

I can get one off Google street view, does that count?

107

That may be a better analogy than you think. You can only do that if the house still exists, and if you know the address of that house. Even if you know the address as of the date you were born, and even if it still exists, you might or might not be able to find it if the address has changed, and even if you can it’s going to take a while.

108

As a side note, we now have something called a passport card, which is legal for air or sea travel to Canada and the Caribbean - and is also sufficient to travel by air domestically (but NOT to Canada / Caribbean). It’s a titch more portable than the actual passport… though good luck convincing a TSA agent that it’s legal.

A couple years back, a friend accidentally let her license expire. The documentation required is much higher when sorting that out than it would have been had she gotten it renewed in time - more so because a) she is a naturalized citizen, and b) our state was just beginning to issue RealID-compliant documents. I believe that at that time, she was required to get a RealID version while others (regular renewals, non-immigrants and so on) could choose either version, though I may be misremembering that. The complication was that her original certificate of naturalization was not deemed sufficient proof that she was here legally, and some immigration database was farkled and didn’t have her listed. I think it took a call to her Congressman to straighten it out. No clue what’ll happen the next time mine is up for renewal (7 years, I think); I know my existing one is NOT compliant.

109

Gah, I have ranted about this before. The last time I renewed my DL it was such a hassle, because of the RealId thing my name had to match the name on my SS card. I go by my middle name and always have; my first name was not on my SS card. I told them to leave the first name off, they said they couldn’t do that. Nope, I had to go change my name with Social Security, which meant I had to dig out my birth certificate, which was such an old copy (photocopied in negative, as they used to do it) that Social Security wanted me to get an updated copy. Then wait, then another trip to the driver’s license office.

I had already been warned about the whole thing of taking in a utility bill. The utility bill has my husband’s name on it. Fortunately, my car registration worked.

A friend of mine had an even worse ordeal. She got married and changed her name, but then she really didn’t ever use her married name. (She has a very awkward last name. She thought she’d be happy to have a much less awkward one. But it turned out that since everyone knew her professionally by the maiden name, she wanted to continue to use it.) So she had the married name on her DL. However, the name on her SSN had never changed. So she had to prove she was entitled to use her maiden name by bringing in an official birth certificate from the county where she was born. She got a particularly passive-aggressive clerk who did not want to take her birth certificate from New York City because…it was not from a county. It was from a city. She ended up calling a state senator she knew whose best advice was for her to try a different DL office, which she did–and that worked.

I don’t get it, actually. Everybody is being scanned and probed and the luggage is being scanned and probed before anything gets on the plane, so who cares what name they’re using? I don’t even care if I get on an airplane with an actual terrorist as long as said terrorist does not have any incendiary devices or hidden weapons while on board. And my DL picture doesn’t look like me. They are using this washed out, expressionless, colorless photo with my hair scraped back. Anyone who stole my DL, male or female, could emulate this look quite easily.

110

I dread encountering that one day - I was born in St. Louis which is not in a county. At all. There is a St. Louis county, but it does NOT include the CITY of St. Louis. I can not produce a birth certificate from the county in which I was born because I wasn’t born inside a county.

Yet another example of why some of these rules are between stupid and criminal - they’re made without any regard to the real world and how the real world does not always conform to the bureaucratic rules.

111

Brromstick, the Indiana RealID site specifically says that computer-generated residency documents are allowed.

“You need two computer-generated documents to prove your Indiana residency when you apply for a new driver’s license, permit, or identification card.”
https://www.in.gov/bmv/2576.htm

112

Except that what matters is how the clerk you happen to be dealing with interprets the law. Unless you have unlimited to keep making new appointments to find a clerk whose interpretation matches the documents you happen to have.

113

Except that “computer-generated bill” does not typically mean " a bill that was emailed to you and you printed it out" . The phrase pre-existed emailed bills, and traditionally and normally means "Not handwritten or typed " . And while it would indeed be unusual to have a handwritten or typed utility, credit card or hospital bill, it is not at all unusual to get a handwritten or typed bill from a doctor. Or a handwritten or typed paystub - which is why paystub says “pre-printed”. Maybe they will accept printed copies of emailed bills- or maybe not. It’s impossible to tell from that list.

114

Either way, Broomstick tried to claim that “There are not options for people living in Indiana.” But there clearly are options. There are over a dozen options, in fact. One of those options, just like New York and Florida, a “residency affidavit” signed but someone else. Another option is simply a lease. Everyone should have a lease, right? Are you all going to say that you have neither a lease nor any mortgage paperwork?

Don’t know, but the lists from Indiana looks awfully similar to the lists from the other two states I’ve looked at so far.

The anecdotes in this thread seem to suggest otherwise. It appears that the nation was doing a very poor job of identifying anyone, and people just went around changing their names at will, and claiming to be whomever they wanted. It’s no wonder why it’s always been so easy for wanted criminals to move to another town and just start up a new identity.

115

Also among the options for proof of Indiana residency is, “Voter Registration Card”. Aren’t you registered to vote, Broomstick? You could have brought your voter registration card and a sworn affidavit from someone else in your house. Or you could have brought a “U.S. Postal Service change of address confirmation”. I can’t think of anything simpler than that! That takes five minutes at the post office. Hell, you could do it online and wait for the confirmation letter that comes a day or two later.

116

I must have lucked out. I decided to get a RealID in 2017 after reading an article in the paper about how NC driver’s licenses and IDs would not be valid for TSA purposes in a few years, and decided to beat the rush. I anticipated some difficulties because I had legally changed my name in 1982, so of course my birth certificate didn’t match my current name. I went to the NC DMV website to find out what paperwork I needed to bring in. As it turned out, I already had all the documentation readily available. Just to be on the safe side, I brought several different types of some of them. Took the bus to the nearest DMV office, where the info desk looked over what I had to verify that it was what I needed and gave me a number. After about a fifteen minute wait, my number was called. The clerk looked over my documentation, entered everything into the system, gave me a receipt, and said my new ID would be mailed to me. Caught the next bus home, and in about a week I had my RealID, just in time for a planned trip.

117

Nenno, you have the patience of a saint.

118

Agree. I don’t get the hostility directed at him in this thread. It’s possible to not be happy with the policy without being a dick to someone just trying to provide answers and clarification.

And I think one thing people are missing is that even though your address isn’t printed in your passport or on the passport card, a permanent address is required on the application. I imagine that’s verified in some fashion when the application is processed.

119

Yes, but –

^ This is the key thing - you are at the mercy of the bureaucratic peon processing your request.

Like I said, I SHOULD have been told I had an option for a “unreal” ID. I was not. In fact, I was explicitly told I did NOT have the option, I HAD TO get RealID which is in direct contradiction to what is on line and what I later confirmed with a higher strata of the BMV. In other words, the clerks are either misinformed or outright lying to people. Doesn’t matter - you’re at their mercy.

Likewise, you’re at their mercy if they decide they just don’t like the documentations you brought in. Like the poster who couldn’t get the clerk to accept a birth certificate from New York City, but insisted on a county issued birth certificate.

120

The BMV in my area will not accept that. They are very, very clear on that. You have to have EITHER a *written *lease that has your name on it somewhere OR a mortgage OR a deed to a property in your name that is paid off.

I actually lived 19 years here in Lake County on a verbal agreement month-to-month. I had no reason to change the arrangement, and it worked well for 19 years. The landlord and I discussed getting a written lease between us as I was looking at getting both a RealID and a passport and that would have simplified matter considerably… but then a Bad Thing happened to the building and I was forced to move last September. After which I signed a very conventional one year lease.

But, to answer your question - no, not everyone has either a lease or mortgage, and it’s not always a because they’re couch-surfing or living in a van down by the river (and even if they are - the homeless should be able to get ID just like anyone else).

(In case you’re wondering - my former landlord refunded me the pro-rated portion of the September rent for the balance of the month after the loss of all utilities even though all we had was a verbal handshake agreement without my even having to ask him.)

Uh-huh.

And just like you’re supposed to provide and official birth certificate, and some clerk can arbitrarily decide that it has to be a certified copy from a county rather than your city of birth even though “county-issued” is not specified anywhere. (I would like to think it’s because whoever came up with the requirements on a Federal level was aware that there are 23 municipalities in the US that are outside of any county).

It’s not just the requirements, it’s also how they’re enforced.

Yes, in fact it was entirely legal to use any name you wanted to use provided there was no fraud or evasion of legal penalties involved.

Not as easy as you assume - most people were able to provide a paper trail back to their birth when asked. It was recognized that “Bill Smith” was most likely a nickname of “William Smith”. A woman changing her name at marriage or divorce was considered perfectly normal, without the need for a formal, legal name change but there was still a paper trail of her identify up until the marriage, then the marriage, then a new name after that still had some resemblance to the prior name. And, oh yes, you could get a signed affidavit for some potential holes in your paper trail, but I have been in the BMV (I have spent entirely too much time there getting this shit straightened out) when a clerk loudly announces that NO, you MUST have the documents they require and there are NO alternative options whatsoever.

I passed a TSA background check in 2008 with no problem, the government was perfectly happy to accept as my legal name the name I’ve been using since I got married - but I couldn’t get a driver’s license renewed in that name? Again, in the name I’ve had EVERYTHING in for 30 years? WTF? There is something really wrong with this picture…