You may be familiar with the TSA’s new rules that went into effect June 21st regarding travelers who try to fly without identification. These travelers are essentially made part of a mini game show where they are the subject of all the questions. Your prize, if you answer correctly, is that you are allowed to board your flight. If you need to travel without ID, Wired magazine has assembled some items which if committed to memory, might help you get through the (game show) process more easily.
“Now, those who left their license at home or had it stolen have to answer a series of questions relayed to the screener by employees in TSA’s operations center in Virginia, where employees have access to databases of public records, including those compiled by data giant Lexis Nexis,” according to Wired.
If you have to fly without identification, memorize any old addresses, the date of your wedding anniversary and your children’s addresses. The correct answer to questions like these may determine whether TSA lets you on your flight. Of course, you’d better hope that the answers that the TSA has are correct also.
One traveler who had her tax returns with her, says that TSA agents actually looked them over. TSA spokesman Christopher White said, “If a passenger has any type of documents, they can present them to assist in verifying identification. If she presented the officer with her tax return, we don’t care how much money she makes–we just care about her identity.”
We have already spoken to one reader who says that they were asked about their political party affiliation. Wired says,
The process of comparing answers to public records already caused a flare-up after one traveler was asked whether he was registered as a Democrat or a Republican, which TSA spokesman Christopher White called a “day one mistake,” where a TSA employee looked at the available public records and asked a question off of the information in the files compiled by Lexis Nexis and others.
Are we to infer that this question is no longer being asked? Well, at least the answer isn’t difficult to memorize. Certainly, some Consumerists have been through this process by now. What questions were you asked that weren’t mentioned in this article?
Flying Without ID? Know What’s in Your Files [Wired]
(Photo: Getty)
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I had a friend who made it on a plane with a knife because they were too busy confiscating his water.
Finding a needle in a haystack is more difficult when you make the haystack bigger.
@bagumpity: Please elaborate on how “Nazi America” has trampled your rights.
There are quite few things we NEED to know:
1. Short of a DNA test, no actions taken by the TSA will make anybody safer. Don’t you remember that the 9/11 terrorists were in this country for quite some time? They were not newcomers, they knew how to play the system.
2. Even if you have with you your driver license, your social security card, your mother and your third grade teacher, they still gonna ask you some of those questions. Have to justify salary, you know.
3. About the “No-Fly” list, what good is it if you have NELSON MANDELA, fFerdinand Marcos(died in the 80′s) the current President of South Africa, a couple of Orthodox Christianity Bishops (from the Middle East)and my next door neighbors’ son (18 months old) in it? And by the way my neighbors do not have “foreign” sounding names. He’s Mark Steward, she’s Penny Fenton-Stewart and the baby is Michael!!!