Guilt by association

Pretty obvious: You fly, you MUST be guilty.

As was said: "Security Theatre". I recently (last 2 weeks) flew. I had a small (about 2 inch) pocket knife with me the WHOLE time. The TSA people were more concered with my having too many "carry ons" than real security. They shine UV lights at my ID to see magic stuff. Maybe I should have an overstamp that says in UV "F*** Y**" and see what happens.

The same thing happens with tomatoes. One bad, they all must be bad. Guilt by association! It never stops. Back to driving my gas guzzling SUV!

Can't pay me enough...

Wouldn't be able to pay me enough these days to travel to the USA. I wonder how long it takes for airlines to create special "avoid the USA" routes, since the Americans have somehow managed to get the airlines to implement their stupid security theatre even if you're just flying through their airspace, yet not planning to land anywhere in their backwards country.

Well, that's not quite true. Everyone has their price. Just mine is extraordinarily high if anyone wants me to travel to/through/above the USA.

More money for Canada and Mexico

Surely meeting yanks for a meeting should be done in Canadia. Refusing to enter the US is a pretty reasonable thing to do these days. Unless the Canuks have rolled over.

It's amazing...

...how brits can sit on their high horses sniffing at the 'destruction of personal freedom' in america, while living in a country which is among the most crushing surveillance societies in the world.

The US is making many horrible mistakes, but at least we can go about our lives without our license plates tracked, cars photographed, selves videotaped everywhere we go, and all manner of other monumentally repressive "for your own good" measures which strike far more directly at the heart of freedom than our feeble efforts on this side of the pond.

Our government may be idiotic (for the moment) but at least they've stuck to screwing up flying. You guys are just doing it the other way around.

@David Wiernicki

Sir, there are more than two countries in the world, and www.theregister.co.uk is available to read in those other ones also.

Nurr nurr nee nurr nurr

Your big brother is bigger than my big brother, nurr nurr nee nurr nurr........

In defense of Fascism-UK, it's one saving grace is its ludicrous, comic incompetence which provides some humorous relief from time to time.

From what I have seen from afar, the US version appears to veer more towards heavily-armed, trigger-happy, razor-blades-under-the-fingernails incompetence of a much chillier cast.

Someone once told me that the difference between the Brits and the Yanks is that for the Yanks life is serious but not hopeless, whereas for the Brits it is hopeless but not serious.

Anyway, tis all villainously vile. The truth is there is something terribly wrong with both these countries, isn't there ?

@David Wiernicki

Many, perhaps most, of those bitching would seem to be American.

Anyway...

The whole purpose is not to prevent people from flying, or even keep the skies safe. It is to feed the customers with the warm fuzzy that they are being looked after, while also giving the TSA some extra tools to smack down complainers.

Anyone halfway analytical would realise that:

* TSA fails a huge % of pat-down audits.

* Any real terrorist will have pretty good ID; either an excellent fake or legit driver's license etc. and won't refuse to show it.

You've got it all wrong

Its all about money - pouring money not yet paid in taxes into the coffers of the mates of whoever is in power.

Hopeless Security will continue to create these bullshit rules to justify their cost. They have not hope of catching anyone/anything. They have to justify their excessive budget somehow.

Just don't go to America - or fly anywhere for that matter- and ensure you wear a hoodie

@Steve Roper

Erm, no. Well, speak for yourself. You sound like the narrator at the start of some sappy Orlando Bloom mediaeval flick. "In a land that time forgot.."

As for the actual story, what exactly is the big deal? If people are really so pissed off about having to present ID then in my book their blood pressure is too high and they're the type of people who are going to complain willy-nilly about whatever they bloody well can, rather than just getting on with life. Granted, I'm perhaps a couple years younger than some folk here so I've grown up not really knowing much else (I can't remember ever getting on a plane and not having to show ID), but folks, listen to Bob - the times, they are a'changin.

The only ridiculous things about this new policy, in my mind, is the "oops I forgot it" way of getting out of it and the fact that it'll actually achieve the square root of bugger all in reducing the threat of terrorism. (Terrorists with valid IDs... who'da thunk it?)

@yeah, right.

"avoid the USA" routes - the Kiwis have already done this. AirNZ now operate two direct flights a day from Heathrow-Auckland. The old one continues to go via Los Angeles where you have to fill out your immigration card including "location of first night's stay in US", get off and go through customs. The new one goes via Honkers (and is two hours quicker outbound).

Your choice!

@David Wiernicki

"brits ... living in a country which is among the most crushing surveillance societies in the world"

I keep reading similar things in the news but the articles never seem to include any evidence of it.

The argument seems to be, "oh look, there's a lot of CCTV cameras, therefore we must be in a surveillance society".

On the rare occasion when the police are asked for their opinion, they usually complain that it can take months to get tapes from cameras, most tapes are recycled within days, a huge amount of the camera are technically illegal and that the image quality is usually too poor to identify anyone/thing in it.

Perspective.

You have to remember here that the US was one of the very few (if not the only) place in the world you could ever get onto a bloody aeroplane without showing ID.

I remember many moons ago, back in the days when we used to wait for beligerant fascist loons to invade some island or other that we owned before we kicked the crap out of them. I was surprised at being asked for my passport when checking in for a shuttle flight from London to Edinburgh. It was explained that photo ID was mandatory and, back then, the passport was the only thing a Brit was likely to have with a photo on it.

@David Wiernicki

Let me guess, I have to set up and live in a country that protects all personal freedoms before I can legitimately comment on the loss of personal freedom in the US. You seem to have this comedy notion that anyone in the UK commenting about this doesn't also comment and protest against the various amounts of bullshit brought in by the UK government.

While I agree that people in glass houses shouldn't throw rocks, it's somewhat funny to see someone in Bush's America (the same one that stops protesters from getting anywhere near official routes when the President is visiting anywhere, the same one that repeatedly sees people being abused by their police, the same one where "voting irregularities" in a state governed by a sibling of the ultimately-victorious candidate in an election were not investigated) saying "Yeah, but you guys are worse off".

Let's face it. Britain, the US, Spain, Ireland, probably most of Western Europe if not the western world completely. We're all kind of fucked with current governmental trends. Sitting there pointing out who's more fucked, or choosing to ignore it by saying that one side or the other is "still more or less free, ish, unless you happen to be of terrorist descent or favour radical clothing like, oh, I don't know, neckerchiefs" is a bit frigging stupid.

This is the situation. We can acknowledge the situation, ignore the situation or do something about the situation. Engaging in verbal wankery about whether this actually *is* the situation doesn't really do much at all.

"I wonder how long it takes for airlines to create special "avoid the USA" routes"

My company already has a policy that they will not book a flight that requires a refuel or stopover in the USA. The did it for several reasons, including:

1. Standing in queues for 4 hours whilst the one Immigration official takes everyone's fingerprints, just so you can get straight back on the refueled aircraft. Just plain annoying.

2. The risk that the person traveling to another country will be bounced back to the UK becauce the Immigration official does not like the answers you give. We work in a specialised and very security sensitive area, and answering the Immigration Official query of what your company does with a "Um - can't tell you" is asking for trouble.

Re: The blindingly obvious problem with this

Unless they're not very good.

@Matt Thornton

Please. If we can't be annoyed at the imposition because it causes no problem, why do they get so pissy when we say "no", since the "proof" solves no problem?

Let 'em keep their silly rules

I was already offended by the airlines policies years ago, and decided that it was not worth the hassle or the expense to fly. It has only gotten more expensive, more of a hassle since then. These days we now have to deal with stripped-down services, poor customer service, abuse of flyers and basic rights being stripped by both the airlines and the government.

Give me my car and the open road.

@Chris

"What the fuck happened to my country? Proceed with the Yank flaming."

Tempting, but I'll hold on that. The legality of an action might depend on the perpetrators state of mind at the moment of the act, but it cannot depend on their pre-meditated political stance. Your constitution grants rights to freedom of expression and thought, so if they want to bar the refuseniks, they really have to bar the forgetfuls as well.

As a wider observation, both the UK and the US seem to be conducting experiments in the balance of power between judges who have to avoid making political decisions and politicians who have to avoid making illegal ones. Fortunately, both are populated by people who have enjoyed freedom for far too long to give it up to a bunch of twats who couldn't organise a piss-up in a brewery, so actually I'm rather optimistic for the future and won't be emigrating. (Could we have an "I won't get my coat." icon for that?) Oh sorry, you don't care about my travel plans. Ho hum.

@ David Wiernicki

What to do mean when you say your 'government may be idiotic (for the moment)' ???

It's always been a country run by bigger idiots who couldn't tell the difference between a Taliban terrorist and a Twinkie.

But errr....

I fly every week in Europe (and within the UK) - I always need to present my ID both when I check in and when I get on the plane.

No ID - no flight.

Did I miss something?

@Colin Mountford

You haven't missed anything, you just have to bear in mind that this is legislation brought in by people whose immigration policy is still based on the assumption that, were you to plan a trip to the US to commit a crime of some sort, you'd be *honest enough to admit to it ahead of time when filling in your travel paperwork*.

In terms of the rule itself, I've always been used to it and frankly am kind of surprised it took them this long to get around to it themselves. But as others have pointed out, this notion that it'll have any impact on "terrorists" whatsoever is rather sweetly naive; the implication clearly being that they believe their identity documentation is so good that it couldn't be faked, even with access to sophisticated equipment (or, more realistically, a couple of grand and the right connections).

No-ID was a great way to skip the line

In the US, the ID-checker always stands at the back of the queue, checking you as you get in line. If you didn't have ID, they'd walk you right up to the front of the queue for "in-depth screening" - if you can tolerate a pat-down and someone poking through your carryon, you're through screening dozens of times faster than you are if you actually stand in line.

Should be the same if you "forgot" your ID.

Anon 'cuz I don't want to end up on the no-fly list.

Weeding out the pricks

It seems like this is simply a way to weed out the assholes who want to make a political statement at the airport. If they refuse to show ID it is obvious they are going to waste everyone's time so they are told to get out of line and go home so the rest of us are not delayed even further.

For those few who have lost or misplaced an ID there is the option of more thorough screening in order to fly.

People are certainly free to protest perceived injustices but there is a proper time and place.

US bars ID refuseniks from planes - but not ID losers’

All this misses the point. Homeland Security was never meant to be effective. The whole thing is no more than "actionism", designed to show the American people and the rest of the world that the US government is merely SEEN to be doing something about GWB's "tourism". There are a lot of people at higher levels of the US govt & administration who damn' well that ID-ing & fingerprinting etc. of passengers at airports won't achieve anything. But it makes damn' good publicity and is good politically.