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Support for this podcast comes from It's Revolutionary, a podcast from Massachusetts 250. Katherine Switzer challenged the status quo by becoming the first woman to officially run the Boston Marathon. Stick around until the end of this podcast to hear her story in her own words. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. This is On Point. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, flight attendant Betty Ong was working American Airlines Flight 11. Barely 15 minutes after the aircraft left Boston Logan Airport, Ong alerted ground-based authorities that something was very, very wrong. The cockpit's not answering. Somebody's stabbed in business class. And I think there's mace that we can't breathe. I don't know. I think we're getting hijacked.
It's been almost a quarter century, but hearing Ong's brave calm still gives me chills. Well, shortly after Ong's alert, someone from the cockpit began communicating with Boston Ground Control.
Is that American 11 trying to call? We have some claims. Just stay quiet and you'll be okay. We're returning to the airport. And who's trying to call me here? American 11, are you trying to call? Nobody move. Everything will be okay. If you try to make a danger yourself and the airplane, just stay quiet.
That is the voice of Mohammed Atta, one of the al-Qaeda terrorists who hijacked not just American Airlines Flight 11, but three other passenger aircraft that morning. They crashed the planes into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The fourth one, due to bravery from the passengers aboard that aircraft, went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Well, after that devastating day, the federal government established the independent nonpartisan 9-11 Commission to investigate not only the attacks, but the failures that led up to them.
The commission found that many of the terrorist actions prior to stepping on the planes were facilitated through the use of false identification. That's one of the major findings of the many findings from the 9-11 commission. And regarding the false IDs, the al-Qaeda terrorists had some 30 IDs between them, according to the commission's final report.
And the commission noted in the pages of that report that those actions, the use of false identification, were cause enough for a new national ID project. The commissioners wrote, quote, secure identification should begin in the United States. The federal government should set standards for the issuance of birth certificates and sources of identification, such as driver's licenses. Fraud in identification documents is no longer just a problem of theft anymore.
At many entry points to vulnerable facilities, including gates for boarding aircraft, sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and to check whether they are terrorists, end quote. So that's really important background. Because soon thereafter, the Real ID Act was introduced in the House and
In 2005 by Representative Jim Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin. He told NPR that year that the new requirements would increase safety in institutions where federal IDs were required.
My feeling is that since we all use driver's licenses as a form of ID, we ought to make sure that they mean something. And what the bill does is it says that the states are perfectly free to issue driver's licenses to whomever they want to, but if those driver's licenses are to be used for federal ID purposes, then they have to meet certain standards.
Well, the bill passed both the House and the Senate by April of that year. However, almost immediately, some people raised concerns about how major changes in identification requirements and information sharing with the federal government could impact personal privacy. Here's then-Florida Republican Representative John Micah taking a question from a C-SPAN viewer in 2004.
There is no way you can prevent someone with two sticks of dynamite getting on the New York, Chicago and Washington subways. There's no way you can prevent that. Be realistic. Tell us the truth. And what should the country do, sir? We can do what we can do. I lived in England when the IRA was planting bombs. I was a block away from where they almost blew up the prime minister. There's nothing you can do about it. You have to be preventive.
But realistic. But you also have to have information about who bad people are. If you look at the instances in which we could have stopped the September 11th, if we'd had information when they first issued visas for them, if we'd had that information at the border and knew that that was Mohammed Adda, if we had information when they were stopped by law enforcement, if we'd had that information at an airline...
Well, information sharing and the Real ID Project continued on. The Department of Homeland Security published the initial deadline for Real ID compliance on May 11, 2008. But very few states had a plan to meet that deadline. In July of the following year, then Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke at a hearing on the implementation of the Real ID Act. She did not mince words.
Real ID, in a way, is DOA. I mean, it's just not being done. DOA, just four years after the original legislation had been passed. Yet supporters of Real ID continue to insist on its necessity as a means to ensure national security. Jessica Zuckerman was a Homeland Security researcher with the Heritage Foundation, and she spoke as a part of a panel on the Real ID Act in 2013.
Sources of identification are the last opportunity to ensure that people are who they say they are and help to halt terrorist travel and terrorist activity. But the REAL ID Act is not just an important tool for halting terrorist activity and security. It's also an important tool for helping to combat fraud and identity theft. Well, it's been 20 years since the REAL ID Act was passed. The can kept getting kicked down the road year after year after year. But tomorrow...
Finally, in some sense, the deadline for real ID compliance when traveling domestically in United States airports will be enforced for the first time. So what took so long? Are all the states ready? And 20 years later, is the idea of some federal standards for state issued forms of identification still actually needed at all?
Well, joining us today is Magdalena Krajewska. She's a professor of political science at Wingate University and author of Documenting Americans, a political history of national ID card proposals in the United States. Professor Krajewska, welcome to On Point.
Hello, Meghna. Thank you for having me. Okay. So can you just remind us specifically, originally, what were the things that Real ID was meant to accomplish? Like what kind of changes are in the actual ID that give it some sort of standardization by the federal government?
Okay, so the REAL ID establishes standards for state issues driver's licenses and also state ID cards issued to non-drivers. And then stipulates that those standards, you know, cards without those standards will not be accepted for kind of federal purposes. So, for instance, when individuals try to board commercial aircraft,
access certain federal facilities, enter nuclear power plants or military bases. And so what the Act does is it lists a whole set of features, security features that those driver's licenses have to have.
in order to be considered more secure. And it also talks about the processes that DMVs have to follow to issue licenses that are more secure. And so that's a really important part of the act. Okay, we'll get to that in a second. But the actual security features, I'm not sure how much detail do we know about what those security features are supposed to be?
Right. So there's, you know, I'm obviously not an expert on the technology of things, but there's multiple features that would just physically make those cards more secure. And those are kind of both features that are like visible on the card and things that are like not visible kind of to the naked eye. Okay. So then you wanted to talk more about the process and why that's important. So go ahead and elaborate. Okay.
Absolutely. So it has to do to a large extent with the types of documents that applicants have to bring to the departments of motor vehicles in their respective states in order to obtain a Real ID compliant license, right? So applicants would have to bring, you know, a birth certificate, an original birth certificate. They would have to bring a passport. They would have to bring, you know, their social security card or, you know, social security identification
They have to bring, you know, information about their residence, you know. So they have to bring those specific documents. And then DMVs actually have to verify that those documents are in fact real. They have to check with certain other issuing agencies to verify those documents.
And so that's a really, really important component. And that, of course, is something that, you know, what most people going into DMVs care about. You know, do I have the right documents? Will I be issued this Real ID compliant license? But there's a second part to this process, too, which most people don't necessarily pay attention to, right, which is that DMVs themselves have to make sure that people who actually issue those licenses are
that they themselves, you know, have been verified and vetted. Long story short is that there are no kind of bad actors issuing those ID cards and the system is not kind of, you know, penetrated by bad actors. So the idea is that with this process standardization, ideally, that no matter what state you got your driver's license or form of identification issued from, that
That the federal government could rest assured that that person brought the same types of identification to prove who they are and that there was no variation in the system. And that's what makes real ID sort of ostensibly so powerful.
That is exactly true, Magna. So the Real ID establishes really this set of minimum standards that states have to follow. So you're absolutely correct. There is now more of that certainty that wherever you're going to go, whichever state you're going to go to, those Real ID compliant license will be more secure. And, you know, they will still look different from state to state.
even the way that you identify just kind of with a naked eye whether the document that you have is a Real ID compliant document, that little star in the upper right hand corner of the license, even that will look a little bit different from state to state. You know, in most states it will look like a star, again in that upper right hand corner. You know, in California there's a bear and then the star is in the middle of a bear, right?
Well, Professor Akraevska, hang on for just a second. When we come back, I want to ask you a little bit about how widely, how much variety there was within what states had required prior to now. And also this question of does it effectively make real ID a form of national ID? So we'll get back to that in just a moment. This is On Point. On Point.
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Professor, on the face of it, the concept of Real ID seems to make sense and be rather straightforward. But if memory serves, it wasn't until what, around 2020?
that every single U.S. state finally got on board and agreed to be participating in the Real ID program? Do I have that right or correct me if I'm wrong? No, you're absolutely correct. It took a really, really long time to get to that point. And why? What were the state's objections?
So there were several reasons why the act has been delayed for such a long time. So there were two main reasons, really. One is because simply changing driver's license processes was simply too big of a task to be done in that initial three-year timeframe envisioned by the law. Congress simply set an unrealistic timeframe when it expected enforcement to take place in 2008.
And DHS officials quickly realized that it would take a lot longer than three years for states to change their processes. So that was kind of the practical side of things. But then, and this speaks more directly to your question, simply, it needs to be said, many state officials were very opposed to the law. And there were many reasons for that opposition. Partly, it had to do with concerns about the cost of changing driver's license processes.
Partly because of concerns about federal overreach and the view that this was not the job of the federal government to set standards for state licenses. And partly because of philosophical concerns, concerns about privacy, about requiring people to produce more documents and storing data from these documents in state databases as the law required.
Okay. Well, it's funny you should say that because we actually have a clip from Representative Jim Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican. He was a major proponent of the Real ID Act. We mentioned his name a little bit before. And here he is in 2005 talking specifically about that sort of information storage concern that states had.
There are now 50 state databases, but they've got to be compatible so that if someone is suspected of applying for a driver's license in multiple states, there can be an electronic verification, presumably while the applicant is still standing in the DMV office.
We also have got some provisions in there that require states to keep their databases in buildings that are much more secure than in the past. And by the way, let me be more clear. Representative Sensenbrenner wasn't just a supporter. He introduced the bill in the House, the Real ID Act. So, Professor, you want to respond to that?
Yes. So it's very important, as you said, and as was quoted in this clip, for states to basically be able to talk to each other and make sure that the person coming into their DMV does not already have a driver's license from another state. That was, again, one of the findings of the 9-11 Commission. As you said at the beginning of the program,
that of those 19 hijackers, they had at least 30 driver's licenses between them, in some cases from multiple states. And the idea was that a person should have one driver's license. It should be issued in accordance with all those procedures, and states should be able to check with another state whether a driver's license has already been issued to an applicant.
Okay. So just to be clear, the idea is that, okay, well, the states would be able to retain their own databases but check across the country for – Yes. Okay. Yes. And this is a very important point, Magna. So I'm so glad you put it this way. States – and this is just absolutely crucial to understand. States are still completely in charge of issuing their driver's licenses and
and those state ID cards issued to non-drivers. States are still completely in charge of that.
Each state still sets a lot of their own rules about who can get a license, how it's issued, how long it's valid for, how much does it cost, right? But the REAL ID establishes this kind of minimum set of standards for those licenses to be accepted for federal purposes. And then a component, an important component of that is that states can check with databases in other states
to make sure that the person does not already have that Real ID compliant license in another state. Right. And by the way, regarding the cost, I think as early as 2007, it was estimated that it would cost the states more than $10 billion to create systems that were Real ID compliant. So it was a lot of money. But so Professor,
In a sense, just to be clear, an American who does not want a real ID doesn't actually have to get one for as long as they don't want to get on board a domestic U.S. flight, go into a federal building or approach a nuclear facility. Is that correct? You can still actually drive with your old license.
Absolutely. That is really crucial to understand. No one is required to get a Real ID license. Your regular state driver's license will still be completely fine for driving. So this is a very, very important point to make.
A Real ID license is helpful if you fly a lot and you go for those TSA checkpoints. Having it in your wallet, right, is obviously, you know, much more convenient than carrying a different type of identification document, such as a passport, which is, you know, larger and more bulky.
So there's kind of that element to it. But it's also the case that, you know, a lot of people don't fly, right? Like if you don't fly regularly, if all you need your driver's license for is driving, you absolutely do not need a Real ID compliant license. And then a very important point also is that if, let's say, you do fly, there's a whole number of other documents that you can use for that same purpose. I've already mentioned the passport or a passport card.
which is a lot less bulky to have and you can have that in your wallet. But it's also a number of other identification documents, maybe a green card, maybe a military ID, a veteran ID, a tribal identification card, one of those like global entry cards. There's a whole number of other documents that you can use. There are people in some of the northern states
In the U.S., five states issued the so-called enhanced driver's licenses. Those are also Real ID compliant. So that's an important thing for people in those states, such as Michigan, to know. And so, yes, there are many other documents that people can use. But, yes, very importantly, you do not actually need one. It is not required.
required for you to have one, your regular driver's license is still fine. For most of those purposes, we use driver's licenses today. So I know I have to let you go. I have one more question. And it was really interesting that all the other forms of ID that you mentioned are essentially federally issued, right? It's the driver's license or the state identification that's the only one that emerges from the 50 individual states. And that is
That is like the heart of the matter here.
I just want you to step back for this last question with me, Professor, because you've written this history of national ID card proposals in this country. Is there some sort of like ingrained philosophical American objection to the idea of a national form of ID other than, you know, military ID or a passport that you talked about? And does the debate over real ID sort of touch on that?
Yes, absolutely. So first of all, let me say two things. One is this Real ID license is not a national identification document. I know this is what many people say. This is what many people fear. But there are multiple, multiple differences between what a national identification card is and what this Real ID compliant license is. Again, as you said, I studied this. I wrote a whole book about this.
Out of the 200 countries around the world, 170 of them have national ID cards. The United States does not.
To your question, yes, there absolutely is a lot of opposition in the United States to this concept of national ID cards. People in the United States associate them with authoritarianism, with surveillance. Now, interestingly, if you look at many other countries, you know, I come from Poland and, you know, in Poland, they're completely non-controversial. Everyone just...
believes that they are just the most normal document in the world. But in the United States, a lot of people have those concerns. And what I would say, what I discovered over the course of my research for the book is that while there is this very significant opposition in the United States, I have also discovered that there are also many people who want
wouldn't actually object to having a national ID card. Like if you actually look at public opinion data over the last 100 years, you actually discovered that the conventional wisdom in a way is kind of wrong on this topic in the sense that many people actually are not as oppressive
And then the second point is, and this is what I talk about in the book, is that national ID cards were actually proposed at various points over the course of the last 100 years. They were rejected at every single moment. And I talk about this in the book, but they actually were proposed at various points over the course of the last 100 years.
and they were proposed by officials from across the political spectrum. And what's really fascinating about this topic, Magna, is that both in terms of supporters and people who oppose national ID cards,
That support and that opposition really runs across the political spectrum. So you can find people from, you know, both major political parties and from various kind of ideological standpoints opposing the idea of a national ID card. And you also find people from both major political parties and across the political standpoint of society supporting the idea of national ID cards.
Well, Magdalena Krajewska is a professor of political science at Wingate University and author of Documenting Americans, a political history of national ID card proposals in the United States. Professor Krajewska, actually, do you have your real ID compliant ID? Do you? I do. I do. I would not feel comfortable, you know, researching this and
So I already got mine a few years ago. And so, yes, thank you for asking about that. Good. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me, Magna. It was a pleasure. Okay, we are definitely going to dive now into more of the nitty-gritty of the concerns over Real ID and also just this big overarching question that in the year 2025...
When technology has taken such great leaps forward, is Real ID even actually the most secure way for identifying Americans? But before we do that, not every American by far objects to the idea of Real ID. Here's Ben Wilson. We caught up with him in Auburn, Maine, and he was in line just yesterday on Monday at the local Bureau of Motor Vehicles to renew his driver's license and make sure it was reused.
Real ID compliant, and he says he's not concerned with Real ID compromising his privacy. The government has asked us for a social security number on our taxes forever. If you're over the age of 18, you've had to give this information up already. So I really don't see an issue with it. I mean, they're the government. They're going to get the same information I give them already.
It's going to go in a different database. I'm more worried about the federal government taking my information and doing foolish things with it. That's Ben Wilson in Auburn, Maine. I'm Meghna Chakrabarty. This is On Point.
Well, Jim Harper joins us now. He's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he focuses on privacy and legal and constitutional issues. He was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. And a year ago, he wrote an article in The Atlantic headlined, The Real ID Deadline Will Never Arrive. Jim Harper, welcome to On Point. Nice to be with you, Meghna. And alas, the Real ID Deadline is in fact here.
So let me just get to that big question. Do we even need it anymore? Well, let me dispute the premise that the Real ID deadline is here. Okay. Because what has actually happened is that the DHS and TSA are violating the law in trying to establish the deadline that they purport to have happening.
Real ID has the Department of Homeland Security decide whether or not states are compliant. And if a state is compliant, the IDs from that state are acceptable. And if a state is not compliant, the IDs from that state are not acceptable.
What DHS and TSA are doing is deciding that they're going to pick out people who have IDs from compliant states. And if the IDs are not federal IDs, they're going to refuse those. It's a narrow technical point, but the DHS only has power to refuse entire states. It doesn't have power to refuse individual IDs.
And so if it turns people away at the airport tomorrow, which is not – may happen in a few isolated cases, that will be actually not something that's sanctioned by the law. So it gives people an opportunity if they're interested to file a lawsuit against the TSA and DHS for doing that. So has the deadline arrived? In an illegal sense, yes. But it actually isn't here. OK. So this is – I want to be sure that –
that I and all listeners understand this correctly. So are you, I mean, like most, many states still allow you to have a non-real ID compliant ID. So are you saying that, that, that, that's totally fine. We've already established that, but that also that ID cannot be refused. Yeah.
at the airport starting tomorrow? - Right. It's a curious twist in a very bizarre and poorly written law, which is that the law specifies that states can issue non-federal IDs, and those non-federal IDs are supposed to indicate that they're not for federal purposes.
But the power that the law gives to the agencies, the agency is only to refuse IDs from states that are not compliant. If the DHS certifies that a state is compliant and it has certified all as compliant as far as I can tell,
Then travelers from those states get to travel using their state IDs no matter what type of ID they have. Again, it's a curious law, poorly written or maybe it's written that way because the federal government actually isn't supposed to be able to commandeer state processes like driver licensing and identification. Okay.
Interesting. You know, we did reach out to the federal government. The TSA said they would try to get back to us with a statement or further information or a person. But as of the broadcast of this program today, they have not done so.
Which is unfortunate because you say this is a tiny little technical detail, Jim, but it seems to be actually quite a big deal to me. And I'll share some information that TSA has put out. And this is actually moment to moment as we're talking. Yeah.
As of today, when I checked on the TSA's website, it has a little paragraph that says, "If you don't have an acceptable ID, a TSA officer may ask you to complete an identity verification process, which includes collecting information such as your name and your current address to confirm your identity. If your identity is confirmed, you will be allowed to enter the screening checkpoint, where you may be subject to additional screening." People are going to go through without federal IDs tomorrow.
Well, Jim Harper, then this once again brings us back to the question of what is the point of real ID? And we'll tackle that when we come back. This is On Point.
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Well, there's a lot of, there's like a thorny mess of details in here that Jim Harper is helping us sort through. He's a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and was a founding member of the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee. And Jim, I actually quite enjoy it when guests bring things to the table that kind of put a twist on where I intended to take this program. So this is one of those moments. Can you...
Help me dive in a little bit more into this tension that you raised about what can DHS actually regulate, right? You're saying that they can regulate whether states are or not compliant regarding Real ID, but they can't directly deny people from boarding airplanes, perhaps. Does that happen?
How does that work when an actual, specifically airports, there's sort of this interesting space where there's both state and federal jurisdiction? I mean, I'm actually kind of quite confused by this.
Peter Van Doren: I would think about it a little more broadly. The constitution created a union of states, the United States, but left states as independent sovereigns and the Supreme Court has held for many years now that the federal government can't regulate states directly, can't tell them what to do. So the Real ID Act was written in with cognizance of that and instead of saying, "Here's how states have to issue licenses," it says, "The federal government won't accept licenses that don't follow these rules."
That creates all these weird eddies and twists and currents. And factually, it doesn't say in that statute that the federal government won't accept
federally compliant, federal IDs. It just says we're going to turn down the states that aren't compliant. Now, another twist is that given the huge load of requirements in the act, almost no state is actually legally precisely compliant, but the DHS has gone and said that they are.
There's this game that's been played over years where they issued a – the DHS issued a thing called compliance factors, which they would consider when deciding whether states were compliant or not. That isn't full compliance. It's the compliance factors that DHS used in sort of rewriting the statute. And that's what's happening is that it has been rewriting the statute.
And we have a supreme court currently that's actually pretty interested in what statutes actually say rather than what congress may have intended. So there are all kinds of world and eddies in this area. But you have this rule that states that are not compliant get their IDs refused. States that are compliant are allowed to – those IDs can go through. The law doesn't require the agencies to refuse non-federal IDs. Aaron Ross Powell
Is this one of the reasons why here we are 20 years later and only now at the point where, I mean, at least we're talking as if Real ID has finally arrived, that it's actually been very, very difficult for states to, even when they wanted to, to fully comply? It's a 20-year-long game of chicken where the Department of Homeland Security threatens these deadlines. We get close to the deadline. Traditionally, what it has done is
four months out or six months out, it said, "Okay, okay. We're going to move the deadline down another two years." The broad politics are what drive that. The DHS, TSA, they know that if they turn away too many grandmas who are going to visit their new grandbaby through enforcement of Real ID, they're going to take heat. Congress is going to take heat. They're going to hear from members of Congress, "What on earth are you doing?"
So, it's that broad – in that broad political sense, they've pushed this deadline back further and further. The new thing is no deadline. There are no deadline change. They're just going to decide on enforcement on the fly. None of it is actually legal but we're in an environment here where with such a badly written law and with the sort of dense administrative processes that are available to agencies,
They've done a good job in this round of chicken of convincing people that they have to have a federally compliant license to travel. We'll just see what happens over coming days. I'm seeing that at one point in time, at least around 2015, there were what? At least 100 different things that went into full Real ID compliance, right? That states had to do.
like everything from how they stored both digital and paper copies of the documentation that went into issuing the real ID, right? How they maintained records of name changes, how they would store photo images, things like, you know, they had to have multi-layered anti-fraud features on the cards themselves, right?
Does that sound right in terms of the entire suite of things that are required to be compliant? You spoke earlier about the cost consequences of real ID. The states were very keenly aware of that when the early deadlines came around. But yes, the storage, digital storage of your what they call breeder documents, copies of your birth certificate, copies of your Social Security card and so on and so forth, those mandates...
are substantial and there are many like that. They also create serious privacy and data security concerns to have those stored in databases at DMVs, which are not paragons of technical security necessarily. There are lots of privacy and security issues to get into that are additional non-monetary costs of Real ID.
But before REAL ID passed, a lot of states were moving to over-the-counter issuance of driver's licenses. They were working on trying to get those DMV lines shorter. REAL ID has consistently lengthened those lines and continues to do so. It's sort of contrary to what states want to do with their driver licensing process, which is make it quick and easy. REAL ID is making it into a national ID card, which it is.
And requiring people to prove their citizenship in order to drive, which is an interesting policy. Well, you heard Professor Krajewska say earlier that she does not think it's a national ID card because it's still issued – well, in part because it's still issued through the states. And you don't even have to have one.
Yeah, I've written a book in this area as well, Identity Crisis, How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood. And in the course of debates over years, I don't think anybody has a formal definition, but I think a national ID is a system that is national. Real ID is. It's for identifying people. Real ID is. And it's practically or legally required. And in America, the driver's licenses, there are a few exceptions, but people who live in large cities or
or San Francisco's Chinatown may not have to have a driver's license, but most people do. So I call it practically required.
If everybody has a real ID with the compliant machine readable zone that has all the information on it, watch for scanning of your ID to become more and more common, not just at airports, but when you go to enter a building that has security protocols, when you go to pick up a prescription and so on and so forth. And so some of the privacy issues really start to come forward when you imagine the day.
Some years hence, I still think, when everyone can expect, every business can expect every American to be carrying this ID with an easily swipable machine readable zone, we'll really suffer some privacy consequences then. Okay. This is really interesting. So let's just jump back in time here for a second and listen to Stuart Baker, who was the first Assistant Secretary for Policy at DHS. And this was in the administration of President George W. Bush.
And Baker testified in 2008 regarding on issues of identity theft, safety and illegal immigration. And he said they were all intertwined issues that could be addressed through Real ID.
Many of us have been victims of identity theft, which is often made possible by forged identity documents. And the same criminal networks that helped illegal workers obtain fraudulent identity cards so that they could use them to obtain jobs, that same network also aided the terrorists who attacked us on September 11. 18 of the 19 hijackers carried government-issued IDs. Many of them were obtained fraudulently.
This led the 9/11 Commission to conclude that for terrorists, travel documents are like weapons. And the Commission made two important recommendations: that the federal government should set standards for the issuance of sources of identification, such as driver's licenses, and that it should ensure that people crossing the border are not exempt from carrying secure identification.
Jim Harper, can you respond to that? This idea that travel documents, as Baker said, are like weapons.
It's a nice – it's a neat line and Stuart Baker was always good with writing a neat line. I remember that testimony and I remember the shift in explanation for Real ID. OK, we're not actually making a good case that this is a counterterrorism security measure. Let's talk about identity fraud. It doesn't make sense to me because what it does is it puts all the eggs in one basket. Let's collect all of those basic identity documents at DMVs and they're going to have
digital copies of them and every DMV in the country is going to be able to communicate with every other DMV in the country and perhaps share those identity documents. So if you get your ID in California, someone in Louisiana might be able to pull it up using the background network that's required by the Real ID Act. Is that a more secure environment than one that's distributed? I don't think so. So the identity fraud explanation for Real ID is pretty poor.
But the government has sort of shifted through explanations over years. I think an identity card doesn't work. Twenty-twenty hindsight might make people believe that it would work to prevent a 911. But even if Real ID had been in place at that time, I don't think it would have had much more than a minor inconvenient effect on those unfortunate attacks.
Well, to be clear, amongst the requirements for a state to be Real ID compliant, I'm looking at some of them here, the state, the DMV has to resolve any issues arising from social security number verification or document verification. That seems to be a very large basket of things. And then as you noted, Jim...
the state has to be able to confirm with other appropriate states or jurisdictions that any prior out-of-state licenses have been terminated and make a reasonable effort to ensure that the applicant does not hold a license in another jurisdiction under a different name. Just two of the many bullet points required for compliance. But that rests upon this idea that the network of databases that would have to support this kind of information sharing is A, secure, and B, even exists now.
I mean, is it in place in the United States? No, and it never will be.
As a security tool, identity is subject to two different kinds of avoidance. One is physical avoidance. Just go to a place where identity is not required. In your early setup piece, you had that one caller into C-SPAN who said, hey, you're not going to keep someone with sticks of dynamite off of the subway in Washington, D.C., New York or other places. That's physical avoidance. Go to someplace where identity checks are not available. So terrorism is not essentially thwarted by identity. Then there's logical avoidance. That is going ahead and getting the ID that you need.
The 9/11 hijackers identified themselves accurately. They said who they were. The 9/11 commission report said no one was looking for them. And that's the failure. 2020 hindsight also suggests that we should have been on top of that. But 2020 hindsight isn't much help going forward.
So it's not a useful identity security measure. People get a lot of time standing in line at TSA to think about it, and I think they share the judgment that this is not actually a useful tool. I do think that people oppose a national ID, and the few Americans that insist on showing a non-federal ID will help make sure that a national ID doesn't come into place in the United States. You know, I
I can't help thinking that to many of our listeners who were born after 2001 and who are old enough to drive are kind of laughing at all of this.
Because they've grown up in a world where they're completely at ease giving their thumbprint to multinational corporations. They're completely at ease with their faces being recognized by facial recognition systems on every corner of the streets they live in, let alone the one that's in their pockets.
I mean, the sort of technological ease by which most Americans feel that they're at regarding giving away biometric information kind of makes the idea of going through this process of Real ID seem totally moot. I mean, isn't even just airport security itself separate from when you stand in front of the TSA agent and hand them your driver's license? Hasn't that actually...
gotten so much farther because of technological advancements, Jim? Well, it's an interesting question because I think there isn't much security to be gotten from ID checking. You could get it if you asked terrorists to register themselves as such when they went to get their driver's licenses. That's about the only way to do it. There is a question that you have to say yes or no to about that, though, right? Yeah.
I'm fond of a quote from a computer security expert whose thoughts extend broadly. "It is poor civic hygiene to install technologies that could someday facilitate a police state." That's a guy named Bruce Schneier who I admire greatly.
Sure, people are – people's privacy preferences are changing relative to us old folks. The kids are crazy these days. But we still need to, as a matter of civic hygiene, work to make sure that we aren't putting ourselves into the soup in some future where a full-bore totalitarian regime happens.
has control of this data and has required us to carry ID cards with us. I sort of, you know, I fight this battle for a future that's uncertain and it's always going to be uncertain. And the past is riddled with examples where national ID systems were used to administer horror. I don't want that to happen here.
Well, point well taken, right? And I think this is why the United States, as you noted earlier, is kind of the outlier in just having no problem with having to quote-unquote carry your papers around wherever you go. I mean, to be an American is supposedly to feel comfortable on the soil of your own home country. But, Jim, there's still this overarching question of national security and identification and
Do you think there's a way or what alternative method would you advise to use that resolves the tension between the federal government and the states when it comes to knowing who people are?
Peter Van Doren: Identity provides security in familiar environments. If you steal my pencil, I know who you are. I can come chase you down and take my pencil back or I can tarnish your reputation as a pencil stealer. In those familiar environments where we have ongoing interactions, identity works. That's maybe why people think that intuitively it works in all situations but it doesn't work.
against sophisticated attackers who will use that logical avoidance, get the ID that's needed. It doesn't work against people who have impulse control, for example, a crazy person. You might know everything about them and they might still do you a lot of damage.
And then there are, of course, the folks that are not interested in worldly justice. And that's who we met with on September 11th, 2001. ID checks had no effect on them and would not have if Real ID was in place then. Well, and I think many people are probably thinking by now that ID checks have...
done nothing to stop mass shootings in the United States, for example, another form of terrorism, but domestically. Well, Jim Harper, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and author of Identity Crisis, How Identification is Overused and Misunderstood. Thank you so much.
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You deserve to feel great. Book your virtual visit today at joinmidi.com. That's joinmidi.com. Support for this podcast comes from It's Revolutionary, a podcast from Massachusetts 250. Follow wherever you get your podcasts and listen on for a preview of a recent episode featuring Katherine Switzer, the first woman to run the Boston Marathon.
You're listening to It's Revolutionary, a podcast celebrating 250 years since the shot heard around the world was fired right here in Massachusetts. I'm Jay Feinstein. From revolution to revolution, we're exploring the people and places in Massachusetts that shape America. Katherine Switzer is one of these people.
In 1967, she became the first woman to officially register for and run the Boston Marathon. I spoke to her a few weeks ago. So the first thing I wanted to ask you is when did you first become a runner?
I first became a runner when I was 12 years old. I wanted to be a high school cheerleader and my father said, "No, you don't. Cheerleaders cheer for other people. You want people to cheer for you." He said, "Life is for participating, not spectating." And he said, "You should get out and run a mile a day so you can make the field hockey team in your high school next year." I did it every day, all through that hot summer and then into high school. And it was very, very powerful for a 12-year-old kid going into high school.
I would look at the 18-year-old next to me in class and I would think, I'm not afraid of him because he didn't run a mile today and I did. And it really gave me this wonderful sense of empowerment. I used to call it my secret weapon. And pretty soon the mile became two miles and then three miles. And when I got to Syracuse University, I asked the coach there if I could run on the men's team.
And he said, no, not officially because it's against NCAA rules. There were no sports for women at Syracuse University. Can you imagine? But he said you could come and train with the team if you wanted to.
But he wasn't serious about it because I heard him laughing to his colleagues. So I showed up. He was very surprised. And I got adopted by the team. I couldn't keep up with them. But a volunteer coach who was 50 and had run 15 Boston Marathons took me under his wing. And every day we would run together. We ran longer. And he would tell me another Boston Marathon story. Until one day I told him I too wanted to run the Boston Marathon.
When I said that, he said, that's impossible. No woman anywhere could ever run a marathon. And we argued. And he said, I'll tell you what, if you show me in practice that you can do it, I'd be the first person to take you to Boston. And indeed, then came the day we ran our 26.2 miles. He passed out at the end of the workout.
because we actually ran 31 miles. I wanted to overdo the distance to make sure I could do it. I was so excited. And when he came to, he said, women have hidden potential in endurance and stamina. And I would say that was the day I really became a runner. You know, you started off saying that
You know, you wanted to do something where people would cheer for you. And when I think of the sights and sounds of the marathon, the first thing I think of is the cheering. What does that feel like? Running and seeing everybody as you pass everybody, all the crowds?
It is an astonishing experience. The Boston Marathon is an astonishing experience. But when I ran it the first time, I really wanted to be very low key. I wanted to keep my head down and just go and run. I wanted to run my marathon and not have any fuss about it. So as we know, there was a big fuss about it because at a mile and a half into the race, the press truck discovered that I was a woman and were all over me taking pictures of
shouting at me, what are you trying to prove? And as that was going on, the official truck came by and the co-race director, Jock Semple, jumped off of the official's truck, ran down the street after me, grabbed me and screamed at me, get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers and tried to rip my bib numbers off.
So there was a melee. My coach tried to get him away from me. He was just out of control. But then my burly boyfriend, who was running with me, threw a crossbody block into the official and sent Jock flying through the air. And my coach screamed, run like hell. Down the street we went. I mean, it's a hilarious story in the retelling, but it was a very, very bad moment. And I was terrified and scared. And I was just 20.
And I thought maybe somehow I had damaged this really, really important race. But the press kept badgering me like, when are you going to quit? And I told them to leave me alone. I wasn't going to quit. And I told my coach, I'm going to finish this race on my hands and my knees if I have to.
I did finish the race. I didn't finish on my hands and my knees. But by the time I finished the race, there were three things that had happened. One, I had forgiven the official. It wasn't his fault. I just figured he was a product of his time. The second thing is, is I was determined to be a better athlete. I ran in four hours and 20 minutes. I wanted to be a better athlete than that. And I knew I could be if I trained hard. And I did become a very good athlete.
And the third thing is, and I didn't know what it was going to look like, but I needed to change the status of women. It's been fantastic to see the astronomical growth in the whole social revolution that women's running has become. And a lot of it is from that day at the Boston Marathon. It's Revolutionary is a podcast from Massachusetts 250. And that's just the first five minutes of my conversation with Katherine Switzer.
The full episode also includes a conversation with Ryan Montgomery, the winner of last year's non-binary category of the marathon. I think a lot of the environment I was in told me that I should act a certain way or be a certain way or show up in a certain way. But I felt like every time I would go running, especially in the outdoors, in the forest, I felt like I could just be me.
Be sure to check that out. For the extended cut, look out for It's Revolutionary wherever you get your podcasts or head to wbur.org slash ma250.