[Polybius]

There are many sensitive areas at the moment. Random searches of little old ladies and asking everyone including terrorist sleepers for an ID are just two of the many distractions from that security effort. In your case your background check got you on the ship, not your ID.

Random searches of little old ladies with Brooklyn accents are indeed a waste of time. However, trying to confirm that the person under whose name the ticket was bought has matching ID to that name serves a useful purpose.

Even if it is a false name, that false name can be a known alias in the intelligence data bank. Since you cannot pay cash and hop on a plane anymore, such a name, even if false, leaves behind an intelligence data trail.

As far as "getting on my ship", yes, every Officer of the Deck aboard my ship knew me by sight but, to get to the ship you had to walk through a restricted area where many warships were docked including carriers with thousands of men unknown to our crew. Nobody walked through that restricted area without their ID hung visibly around their neck. and available for immediate inspection upon request. To do so invited immediate detention for questioning.

That is why, on my last day aboard after turning in my ship's ID card, I required a Master-at-Arms to escort me from the quarterdeck out to the gate of the restricted area.

No visible ID available for immediate inspection upon request - No passage. - No exceptions. - Not even if you were the Commanding Officer of a CVN.

Is that any way to treat a loyal U.S. Naval officer with Constitutional rights?

You betcha.

[palmer]

I don't think there's any Constitutional argument for or against (I disagree with Gilmore's portrayal of it as such). But I look at the cost and benefit of ID schemes, and the cost includes the false sense of security presumed in restricting boarding to people with IDs. The issue you are dancing around is your extremely thorough background check that allowed you to be trusted by your crewmates and security staff and possess the ID. That trust is based upon the fact that the investigator visit people in person who vouch for you, in other words, all trust is local. The problem with a federal watch list should be obvious: who is on it and shouldn't be, who is not on it and should be, how does the development of the list line up with the background checks done by the issuers of the ID? Is there any local checking of reputable references? Are the ID givers themselves checked? What happens when the watchlist system is broken and the ID check turns into a meaningless routine?

There are lots of potenial security problems in this country, and a limited amount of resources to protect them. Instead of a providing a false sense of security in everybody having an ID, I would much rather have a real sense of security from active surveillance of suspects, active defense of vulnerable locations in airports or any other infrastructure. Just one simple example, better use of sensors to detect explosives.