Testing the TSA: Flying Domestic without Identification

Is identification required when flying on a domestic flight? This post is a recap of my experience trying to answer this question.

Our story begins in late 2008 when Nick Semenkovich, then News Editor of MIT’s The Tech, told me that a government issued ID was not required to fly on domestic flights. A bit of research uncovered Gilmore v. Gonzales, a 2007 case involving EFF co-founder John Gilmore that questioned the constitutionality of ID requirements when boarding a domestic flight. The court held that neither the identification policy nor its application to Gilmore violated Gilmore’s constitutional rights since refusing to show identification merely triggered a more thorough “secondary screening.” However, this seemed to suggest that identification is never required for domestic flights as long as you submit to additional screening.

More troubling than the ID requirement was the inability of the government to show Gilmore the text of the law which stated the ID requirement. The government argued that because the ID regulation contained “Sensitive Security Information” it could keep the full text of the law secret from the public. Undisclosed laws are especially troubling when courts such as the United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) can establish a body of law without input from individuals outside the government. The FISA court has been much discussed and criticized following the 2013 Snowden revelations, including a leaked secret court document that compelled Verizon to provide a daily, ongoing feed of phone call metadata to the National Security Agency.

I decided to test the ID requirement when returning to Boston from Pittsburgh after winter break. Armed with the court ruling in hand, I entered the TSA screening line and informed the officer checking identification that I would like to exercise my right to not show identification. The agent promptly told me that I would not able to board the flight without identification and asked me to step out of line. It was at this point that I was approached by a man with a television camera who happened to be filming inside the Pittsburgh airport for an upcoming television show called Homeland Security USA. Although he and his team were in the airport covering a segment on immigration, after I explained my experiment he was intrigued and asked me to go through the screening process again, this time on film. The presence of the camera seemed to sway the mind of the TSA agent who had earlier rejected my request to not show an ID and I was ultimately waved down with a metal detector and allowed to proceed to my gate.

Here’s an excerpt from the ABC episode of Homeland Security USA. Be sure to take note of when the TSA discovers my original Tron vinyl soundtrack.

I found it particularly interesting that when I told the TSA agent “I have nothing to hide” that he responded by saying “Then why not show your ID?” I might ask the same question of the FISA and other courts that establish secret laws — if you have nothing to hide then why is there so much secrecy around these laws?

For a final piece of humor, check out this remix of the episode created by consummate activist Rich Jones.