> We’ve given up so much freedom

Arguably it's merely been taken from us. There are plenty of who object, and the TSA is wildly unpopular. That makes little difference to the fact that the pace continues ever further. I don't mean to be defeatist, but I don't think a sternly worded letter has ever made much of a difference, and probably won't in the future.

The only caveat is that when REAL ID takes effect and entire states full of people (e.g. Arizona) simply cannot fly, maybe enough complaints will be generated to come to some compromise. I'm not holding my breath, though.

> The only caveat is that when REAL ID takes effect and entire states full of people (e.g. Arizona) simply cannot fly

Citation?

https://www.dhs.gov/real-id shows Arizona in green.

Next October, a standard AZDL will not be eligible. AZDOT has been sending out notices on how to get an ID valid for air travel, but I’ve been ignoring them because I already have a passport.

Why isn't this a political issue? I think it's because politicians are increasingly distracted by re-election, and end up delegating the actual work of governing to enormous bureaucracies, public and private. This delegation comes gladly, for two reasons: first, the risk of mistakes is very high, so the fewer decisions you actually make, the better, and second, the delegated organizations are very good at keeping the real perceived complexity of problems high. (Incidental complexity can be weaponized, like anything else.)

That said, the experiment hasn't really been done. Can a politician campaign on restoring the dignity of the American public? Can a politician convince people that security theater is real and really harmful? I would guess not, but I would be glad to support whoever that is.

Our press' is complete shit. It focuses on trivialities instead of real political issues. Not their fault though, it is an economic reality forced upon them.

Most states will offer a form, it seems, or people will just use their passport.

I do the latter and will just continue to do so. shrug

Even getting a passport in the states is a pain though. Getting an European passport felt like a well-organized formality, while even as a native born citizen getting my US passport felt almost adversarial.

IME, it depends on the location. At one post office, the desk clerk was very antagonistic. At another, or at the State Department, it was about the same as getting a DL (except for the wait)

>We need to stop letting people scare us into giving away our freedoms.

It doesn't seem all that scary if everyone's doing it. Just look at the use of facial recognition in the movie Coco. They could have made up any magic to stop Hector from leaving, but Disney decided to teach kids that having your faced scanned when going through security is totally normal.

https://youtu.be/t9Dn4YrJGak?t=92

And magic did stop Hector from leaving. He couldn't actually step on the flower petal bridge. So what was the point of the checkpoint?

I'd guess it is the other way around. It takes magic to be able to use the bridge. At the checkpoint they check to see that someone has put your photo out. If someone has then the checkpoint puts the enchantment on you that lets you use the bridge. Hector had no photo, so didn't get the enchantment at the checkpoint.

Jesus it was a cute antic,not some conspiracy by Disney.

It’s security theatre at best; this technology will be used to monetize your biometric data, and you won’t get a single penny. Combine this with a social credit score system, and you will have a surveillance apparatus that is effectively unchecked.

You could fly with guns and smoke cigs in planes in the 50s-60s, that was true freedom, right ?

Planes were hijacked all the time, and back then they weren't nearly as many planes as now. [0]

> so much of what made air travel fun

It's not supposed to be "fun", flying isn't a right, it's a privilege that enabled mass tourism which is an ecological and cultural plague. People take easyjet/ryanair like they take their cars to go grocery shopping, Berlin, Paris, Rome, &c. are now hell on earth.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

In what sense are they "hell" and how come you think free movement is a privilege - that sounds a bit elitist.

Free movement is a right in the EU BTW

> In what sense are they "hell"

Deezer/Jump/OFO/Mobike/DonkeyRepublic bikes everywhere, now they even started using electric scooters, parking them in front of monuments, in the middle of the already small sidewalks, on the road (??!)

You can't go to museum/parks/monuments/local biergarten.

Public transports can't keep up. Even worst, roads can't keep up (uber + car2go + taxis everywhere)

Half of the flats in touristic areas are aribnbs, artificially increasing local prices + kicking local people out.

Artificially increases restaurants / bars prices.

I don't even get how tourists are having fun, it's literally like queuing in Disneyland to see/do the most basic things and take the same pictures as everyone else. I saw hundreds of people queueing for 2+ hours for a famous burger / kebab place, if that's what you consider "fun" and "freedom" ...

> how come you think free movement is a privilege

Never said that. Now that people can buy a Paris<>Berlin tickets for the price of a restaurant they go enjoy their mindless 3 days of paradise, wreak havoc on the locals, and move to their next destination. It's just like freedom of speech, when abused it starts to get nasty.

> When culture becomes nothing more than a commodity, it must also become the star commodity of the spectacular society. - Guy Debord

> Ideology, information and > culture < tend more and more to lose their content and become pure quantity. - Raoul Vaneigem

This sounds like a rant presumably you would like to have active and passive citizens ?

It sure is a rant, but it's my daily life.

> you would like to have active and passive citizens ?

No, just informed and non destructive tourism. The number of tourists coming to berlin, for example, doubled in 10 years, the infrastructure almost didn't change in the same time. 3.5 million inhabitants, 14[0] millions annual tourists. Every single month of the year: 40%+ of the population is made of tourists.

[0] edit: 13.5 million guests, 32.9 million overnight stays. https://about.visitberlin.de/en/materialien/toolkit/tourism-...

https://ourworldindata.org/tourism

Assuming every one of those overnight stays means two days spent in Berlin, and if they are spread out over the year, that's 175 thousand tourists at any given time, about 5% of the population. Of course they'll congregate in certain locations and certain times of year, but you're overstating the case.

Instead of shaking your fist at airplanes flying overhead, maybe try increasing the hotel tax and cracking down on AirBnBs.

Of course, you'll probably encounter opposition to this because some locals are making a great deal of profit.

Free movement is a right yes, but flying is not...

Isn't limiting flying to the rich anti democratic.

People in the west need to get over their phobia of violence. Until there is mass destruction of property (security cameras), or riots, or violence against politicians, nothing is going to change. Maybe I just have less faith in the system than other people, but I believe that any system will be successfully gamed after a certain number of years and that's what we have on our hands. I have very little faith in the ability of our system to solve the problems it created itself.

yes, and people who think there is no violence or aggression in the west don't realize that the government just has a monopoly on it. Militias used to be common and very American.

Because violent upheaval has such a fantastic history of consistently returning liberal governments that are not at all interested in security measures?

Going to go out on a limb and say that preferring to be biometrically screened at an airport than incarcerated or dead isn't an irrational phobia of the latter either...

> We’ve given up so much freedom & so much of what made air travel fun

I don't disagree that our freedoms are being eroded but what exactly was more fun about air travel 5 years ago that isn't still today?

> People were flying without any photo ID until just a few years ago (except internationally).

You can still do this:

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-screening/identification

Sometimes yes, but they may or may not let you through if you can't answer their questions.

I had to do it once and just barely got through. They had to phone in and then ask me several questions that were rather ambiguous. Sort of like credit check questions but with some other strange stuff mixed in. The only specific question I remember was they asked me to name any churches or schools nearby my home address.

Then I had to get a very invasive patdown and they had to take every item out of my bag and check them all individually.

I’ve just flown London to Aberdeen (UK) and back with no need for ID. You certainly can still do this internally. An exception may be if your terminal is mixed in with international flights, then you’ll be lumped in with them at security.

Well yes, because UK is a weird country in that you guys have no official ID system. People either use their driving licence or a passport, and neither is mandatory to have. Most other EU countries just issue everyone with an ID card so 100% of population is covered.

Why is that weird - its weird that post ww2 that there wasn't more of a backlash against id cards in Europe.

Inside of Schengen you don't need ID to fly unless your airline requires it (many LCCs do to prevent ticket reselling). I've flown SAS without ever showing ID - just scanning my eTicket barcode at security and the gate.

(You are required to carry ID when visiting another Schengen country, but it is not checked by airports like for extra-Schengen flights)

And often not even then in my experience - T5 Heathrow is where (maybe) all BA's internal flights leave from and a huge amount of their international. Same security, same lounges, same terminal - only time ID is needed is before getting on the plane internationally (or at the Visa-Check desk if that applies to your destination). Mind you a I read something about them taking a photo of you at security for internal flights, and 'assuring' you it's deleted once the flight has left.

I didn’t know this was still possible. I used to fly Nottingham <-> Glasgow and it was just like getting on a train or coach. I had wondered why it needed to any different now but I see that it’s because the terminal in EMA is now both for internal and international.

And to Ireland, as well. I once flew to Dublin and only realised on the plane I'd forgotten my passport. Got through with my paper driving license, but I don't think I even needed that, strictly, although currently you need _some_ form of ID if flying into Ireland from the UK.

> We need to stop letting people scare us into giving away our freedoms.

Scaring the public is worth billions of dollars to businesses selling this crap to the government. It won't end as long as it basically prints money.

For many years, I remember needed a piece of photo id with my ticket to get through TSA security checkpoints. What were you able to do instead? Just give a ticket?

You didn't even need that, you just walked through some metal detectors and you could hang out near the gate and greet your loved ones coming off the plane. You didn't need a ticket. You didn't need ID. You didn't even need an intent to fly.

Most Australian domestic flights/airports are still like this.

Sidenote: entering/exiting both Aus and NZ recently, immigration checkpoints in both countries did appear to make extensive use of facial recognition.

Yes, this is also the case in Europe (EU passports go through automated gates very similar to the Australia/NZ ones). Your passport contains biometric information about your facial structure, and the facial recognition is used to verify it.

Given the somewhat-recent studies[1] which show that the vast majority of border guards (unless they happen to be "super-matchers") have a 1/7-or-worse failure rate when trying to check a person's passport photo, I think it's quite understandable to do the facial recognition electronically.

But such a system should only be used for immigration purposes (where identity verification is very important to get right), not for getting onto a plane or just coming into the waiting areas of domestic airports.

[1]: https://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/4185916.htm

It is worth noting that while it's totally possible to fly domestically in Australia without having your ID checked, you're still required to have one.

I'm actually quite happy with the facial recognition cameras at the Australian border - they make things a lot faster than they used to be from my experience.

But don't you remember the constant steady stream of daily terrorist attacks? [eyeroll]

Haha, oddly enough there was a period where there were almost daily hijackings of aircraft! The most common period for plane hijackings was 1961-1972. It was just a thing that happened sometimes and people totally just rolled with it. Sometimes your plane was hijacked and you landed in Cuba. Whatev, if happens: https://www.vox.com/2016/3/29/11326472/hijacking-airplanes-e...

That's why we added the metal detectors. Reinforcing the cockpit doors may have been an okay response to the events of 9/11 and potentially would have been sufficient to prevent most major terrorist attacks that seek to use the plane itself as a weapon rather than merely destroying it. (Also people will generally gang up to attack hijackers now rather than just remaining calm and letting them fly the plane elsewhere. Which sufficiently changes the dynamic.)

The TSA has only been around since November 2001. Before that, there were no TSA security checkpoints to get through. There was a security line, but no one cared who you were when you went through it.

Never let a good crisis go to waste.

Sometimes you could get on the plane and buy the ticket aboard.

I remember the first time I encountered a metal detector at an airport (my parents were concerned that it would terrorize us kids but I just thought it was interesting). Before then we just walked onto the plane, like boarding a train.

In Europe I routinely fly without being ID'd. I just present my mobile boarding pass to the scanner, and go through security. Anyone with my phone would be able to get on board.

It's not 100% ID-free though: AFAIK they are permitted to check ID, and they do it randomly.

I am assuming you're flying within the schengen zone.

Can I ask what countries you fly in? I fly frequently within the European Union and I am a EU citizen. However, even for flights between the Netherlands and Germany I have to enter my ID details during check-in and it's checked multiple times throughout the trip.

It's not just random checks, but it seems mandatory. When you drop off the luggage they ask for your ticket + ID. When you board the plane, they again ask for your boarding pass + ID. The exception is large, modern airports such as Munich where you simply scan your boarding pass when boarding the plane.

How do you do this? Do you just refuse?

Maybe this is not general: I am mostly speaking about commuter flights within Germany. Typically I am flying without checked bags and I go straight to security.

I have definitely also flown from Germany to Italy and back without ever showing ID. I can also recall flying from Germany to Shiphol without ID, but I can't recall whether I was controlled on the return flight.

Airlines may additionally request ID on their own, many do to prevent ticket reselling.

> People were flying without any photo ID until just a few years ago

And how well did that end up?

Remember "back in the good old days" when 30+ highjackings a year was normal?

> > People were flying without any photo ID until just a few years ago

> And how well did that end up?

With no more serious problems than have been seen under the new regime over a much longer period than the new regime has been in place.

> Remember "back in the good old days" when 30+ highjackings a year was normal?

Well, no, not literally, because I'm under 50. But I do remember the much lighter than the current regime security checks that were put into place which ended that, and reduced the base rate of security incidents so low that it's nearly impossible to detect whether the much more intrusive current measures have any added effect.

Would showing a photo ID have prevented those hijackings? I suspect not but I am ready to learn otherwise.