Shostack + Friends Blog Archive

 

Flying Without an ID

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I’ve been inspired by Christopher Soghoian’s efforts to fly without having to show ID. I figured that my return flight from RSA was the perfect time to try it for myself. I was flying without my family and had lots of time to spare.
Chris has previously reported on fun flying out of SFO, I figured that this would be an interesting test since I was flying NWA instead of AA. So I printed out my boarding pass then went up to a ticket agent and told them that I’d lost my drivers license. The agent asked if I had any other ID. I told him I had a credit card, which he never asked to see, and he proceeded to write SSSS on my boarding pass as well as initial it.
Upon arriving at security the TSA agent didn’t even blink but passed me off to the SSSS line. There was one person in front of me and another one being SSSS’d when I arrived. Like in Chris’s report there was only one TSA rep performing SSSS’s (Not surprising since NWA and AA share a security checkpoint). After waiting about 5 minutes it was my turn. I declared my 12 oz bottle of saline solution and was allowed to bring it through with no problem.
The only push back I got was when I asked to be hand frisked as opposed to going through the puffer machine. Everyone was very polite but very puzzled as to why I wouldn’t want to do it. However, they did volunteer that I didn’t have to do it and I was hand checked. My stuff was passed through the x-ray machine where I could keep an eye on everything and an agent quickly brought everything over to where I was as soon as it was cleared.
The rest of the process was quite quick with multiple agents coming over to speed up the process of testing my gear for chemical residues. Everyone was quite nice and not only handed me my boots and jacket as they finished to allow me to reassemble myself quickly. The team was efficient and very neatly repacked the stuff they removed from my bags.
All in all, the entire process took just over 10 minutes and got me through security significantly faster than going through the regular process. I’m definitely doing it again in the future.
[Image from tsa.gov]

2 comments on "Flying Without an ID"

  • Atta Boy!
    Another happy passenger who got through security faster without showing ID. I like to think of refusing ID as the poor man’s Verified Identity Pass. Skip the queue and preserve a bit of your dignity in the process.
    I am interested to see that the NWA employee initialed the SSSS. I’ve never seen that before.
    I’m not really sure the point though – there are so many employees working at the various airlines check-in counters that TSA staff couldn’t possibly be able to remember all of their initials. Still, I suppose it provides some form of a paper trail after the fact – assuming that you didn’t print out -another- copy of the boarding pass, and trash the SSSS’d pass after you have gone through security…
    Although – I guess TSA avoids that scenario by carefully marking the boarding pass with a red ink line once you’ve gone through security – a totally foolproof and un-copyable method of marking a boarding pass as used.

  • Arthur says:

    Thanks! Interestingly they never actually did the highlighter thing for my boarding pass. However they did punch both halves of my boarding pass with one of those railroad conductor style hole punches. The hole was shaped like little hearts.

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