Today, after nearly two decades of implementation and delays, the federal government’s new identification requirements for traveling by plane domestically or entering federal buildings technically go into effect. This federally-compliant ID card—known as Real ID—can only be attained with specific records and documents laid out by the federal government. It’s labeled by a black or gold star in the upper right corner.
Even though DHS Secretary Kristi Noem promised that, at least initially, people without a Real ID will only have to face some “extra scrutiny” at security checkpoints, it’s safe to assume that, as the full requirement sets in over the next several weeks and months, some number of people will show up to airports unaware that they no longer have the documents required to board their plane. And, because the process of getting through most domestic airports was grueling enough before the deadline, many expect air travel to be especially arduous during the transition.
Because of the absoluteness of this new requirement and the harsh punishments for non-compliance—just picture what would happen to you if you tried to get into a federal building or onto a plane without the accepted forms of ID—it can be easy to write off the Real ID requirement as some new rule that, while annoying, is probably being implemented for a good reason.
It’s not.
As mentioned above, the Real ID Act was passed twenty years ago in 2005. It was one of the many measures rolled out in the wake of the 9/11 attacks that was presented to the public as being necessary to ensure that similar attacks would never happen again.
The original bill specified that the federal government would refuse to accept any form of ID that did not meet the requirements Congress had passed by May of 2008. But as that date drew closer, few states had implemented the new provisions. Some governors had vocally refused to comply because they opposed what was, in effect, the implementation of a national identification database.
That prompted the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to delay the deadline several times—first to 2011, then a complicated range of deadlines from 2013 to 2017 based on age and state of residence, and then to one universal deadline in October 2020.
Then the pandemic hit, and the deadline was extended again to 2021, then 2023, and finally to today, May 7, 2025.
If these new ID requirements were as crucial to the safety of air travelers—and the American public at large—as the federal government has claimed, the sheer time it’s taken to implement would be unacceptable. That alone is a sign that, perhaps, the federal government’s motivations are not what they say.
And indeed, if you look back at how and why the 9/11 attacks occurred, it’s clear that preventing a similar attack is—at most—an extremely thin excuse for this new federal ID system.
None of the 9/11 hijackers used fake IDs or pretended to be someone else when they checked in and boarded their flights. At the time, an ID check was only required during check-in, and the rule was not always enforced. All of the hijackers who were asked to show ID presented legitimate forms of identification—mostly foreign passports.
One hijacker was flagged at check-in because he did not have a photo ID. Two other hijackers were similarly flagged by a joint FBI and FAA pre-screening system after identifying themselves.
But the government’s rules at the time only required the three flagged hijackers’ checked luggage to be set aside until they had boarded their flights—a rule meant to prevent people from sending bombs onto flights they would then purposefully miss, as is suspected to have happened in the famous 1988 Lockerbie bombing. All three hijackers were allowed to board their planes.
So, it’s hard to see how anyone can seriously argue that some new ID requirements that would have done nothing to stop the 9/11 attacks are crucial for preventing future attacks of the same nature.
The truth is that the Real ID is just the latest chapter in the federal government’s twenty-plus years of using 9/11 as an excuse to protect and expand its power.
Washington could have pursued the most plausible path to avoid future 9/11s by calling off the completely unnecessary meddling it had been conducting in the Middle East. The wars our government had waged, supplied, and bankrolled in the region had first strengthened the popularity of anti-American thought among certain radical factions of Sunni Islamists. Osama bin Laden was then able to seize on that sentiment and use his reputation as an anti-Soviet fighter in Afghanistan to convince a couple hundred followers to adopt his strategy of targeting the US directly to draw the Americans into a war like the one he thought led to the Soviet Union’s collapse.
Instead, American politicians and bureaucrats decided to act as though the American public’s security could best be attained if they first gave themselves significantly more power and then used it to try and pacify the entire Middle East with the very same methods that had just convinced nineteen young men to fly planes into American buildings.
And as the neoconservatives and establishment war hawks have helped boost the popularity of bin Ladenite thought with over two decades of relentless wars, incursions, covert operations, and air campaigns, American officials also seized on the opportunity to expand their power here at home.
The federal government, of course, nationalized airport security—even though the private contractors handling it before were already tasked specifically with enforcing FAA rules, and the 9/11 hijackers had not packed anything that the FAA prevented them from taking on the plane. The attack was not an airport screening failure. But now it’s all handled by a group that will continue to operate in every commercial airport in the country regardless of how abysmal it is at detecting banned items.
Beyond the airport, the federal government gave itself sweeping new authorities to conduct surveillance on everyone, including American citizens, with the passage of the Patriot Act. Taking after the regime in Beijing that they love to demonize for the same reasons, federal bureaucrats in Washington built up extensive systems to monitor digital communication and track the American population with technologies like facial recognition.
Real ID is the next major development in that effort. While the federal requirements, as of now, are limited to the specific documents and “mandatory facial image capture” needed to attain a state ID, the law leaves the government plenty of room to expand those requirements to include biometric identifiers in federal databases like retinal scans, fingerprints, or DNA.
In other words, while the issues with the initial Real ID rollout will mostly be limited to a few occasional long waits at the DMV or airport, the bill lays the groundwork for the federal government to force anyone who wants a state ID to forfeit biometric identifiers or facial recognition data to federal databases that would constitute the kind of detailed de facto national ID system that the biggest tyrants of history could have only dreamed of wielding.
That may seem a bit far-fetched. But it is naïve to think that, in the aftermath of another terrorist attack, the politicians and bureaucrats who are always searching for any excuse to expand their power would not use some new powers that they already gave themselves.
If we allow that day to come, we’ll yearn for the days when our big problems consisted of long airport lines.
