Photo ID not needed to fly

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Nobody looked me in the eye. Nobody asked me any questions. I was standing at Philadelphia International Airport last week waiting to fly home after a conference. I had lost my wallet and all my photo identification cards, including my Texas driver's license.

Aside from losing my wallet, I also lost sleep. Worrying. I couldn't return home on a commercial airline without proper identification. Or could I?

The answer might surprise you as much as it did me. What I learned also raises questions about whether, in the name of security, we are being misled by the government. But according to a former presidential adviser I talked to later, it's not a security mat ter as much as a question of fairness to all paying travelers. We aren't being told what we need to know.

Here's what happened:

At the airport, I stepped up to the U.S. Airways counter, not knowing whether they would let me on the plane. I presented my boarding pass to the employee and announced: "I don't have a photo ID."

Without looking up, she replied, "You can still fly."

She scribbled with a red marker on my boarding pass the following notation: "SSSS."

I walked to the security line and presented my boarding pass to the woman inspecting photo IDs and boarding passes. The woman, a non-TSA contract employee, didn't look at me either as she sent me into a glass holding area.

A Transportation Security Administration employee took me into a corner area where the SSSS travelers go.

SSSS, according to Internet sites, apparently stands for "Secondary Security Screening Selection." But you can't be sure, as the TSA won't tell you.

"We don't go into detail about what that signifies," TSA spokeswoman Andrea McCauley told me later.

The secondary screeners gathered around, but again, nobody looked me in the eye or asked any questions.

One man waved a security wand around my upper torso. Then he patted me down.

Two others went through the electronic equipment in my carry-on bag. They used an Ionscan machine to test swabs for traces of explosives on my BlackBerry, cellphone, iPod and other items.

"You can fly now," a TSA screener announced, again without looking at me.

Before I flew, I had called the airline and asked what to do. I was told that I needed to file a missing wallet report with the Philadelphia police so I could get an incident number. I did, but at the airport, nobody asked me anything.

Turns out there is no requirement that you produce a photo ID when you travel on a commercial airplane.

Originally, the TSA's Web site stated, "You must present a Boarding Pass and a Photo ID to get to the checkpoint and to your gate."

The latest TSA Web site language, however, states: "We encourage each adult traveler to keep his/her airline boarding pass and government-issued photo ID available until exiting the security checkpoint [children are not required to show identification]. The absence of proper identification will result in additional screening."

The TSA spokeswoman confirms: "If a passenger doesn't have one, like yourself, because it was lost, which does happen, then we do subject them to additional screening."

The change came after an unsuccessful lawsuit filed by John Gilmore, a millionaire founder of Sun Microsystems who is now a civic activist. On July 4, 2002, Gilmore tried to fly without presenting a photo ID. He was refused and filed suit against the government.

As his case traveled through federal courts, Gilmore kept losing his quest for information on the government's actual policy.

The federal government stated in court papers that the policy was secret and could not be divulged.

In Gilmore's pleading to the U.S. Supreme Court, which refused to hear the case, his lawyers wrote that keeping the policy secret "purposely or inadvertently causes transportation security officials to mislead the public. Passengers are consistently advised that federal law requires them to show identification. That representation is false, however."

Now the policy's intent is clearer, but the actual written policy is considered secret and is still not publicly available.

I turned to Ohio State University law professor Peter Swire, an expert on privacy matters, for further explanation. He served as President Clinton's chief counselor for privacy.

Gilmore's case was important to travelers for two reasons, he said. But neither has to do with security, because secondary screenings should keep passengers secure, he said.

"It's important for the government to tell us the law before they punish us," he says. "What if you drive to the airport and forget your driver's license and say, 'Oh, I can't visit Grandma,' or, 'I can't go to my business meeting'? A lot of people turn back from travel because they thought they didn't have a choice, when they really did have a choice.

"So there's a basic principle that citizens should know what the law is. But there's also the practical matter: Did people change their behavior and suffer harm because they didn't know what the rules were?"

What kind of harm? Some, he said, may skip their flight or buy a more expensive ticket to fly later after they fetched their ID. None of this applies to foreign travel where passports are always required. And travelers' names are still checked against the government's No-Fly list, the TSA says.

The TSA spokeswoman told me that our personal security is not harmed by those, like me, who fly without an ID. Bags are screened. Bodies are checked for weapons.

So actually, it's all about knowing what the requirements are when you fly. And now you do.