by Gaby Del Valle at The Verge
After 20 years of delays, the REAL ID Act is going into effect. No one is ready.
At long last, the deadline to get a REAL ID is here. On May 7th, after nearly two years of kicking the can down the road, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will finally require travelers to have REAL IDs — or other compliant forms of identification (more on that later) — to board domestic flights in the US. It’s safe to say that no one is ready for it. The TSA is bracing for chaos at airports, and DMV offices across the country are reporting lines out the door.
As of mid-April, 81 percent of people traveling through TSA checkpoints had REAL IDs or other forms of compliant identification, according to the agency. For the nearly one in five passengers who don’t, however, the enforcement of the May 7th deadline may come as a shock. The REAL ID Act passed in 2005 as part of the fervor over national security that swept the country in the wake of the September 11th attacks, and was supposed to be fully implemented by 2008. Seventeen years and numerous delays later, the deadline is finally here.
“People will experience travel delays,” Patricia Mancha, a TSA spokesperson, told CBS News in April. “People have had years to really plan for this, so TSA will simply enforce the laws and the rules as they apply.”
It’s true that people have had years — 20 of them, in fact…