June 24, 2008 12:18PM # TSA Background Check Includes Political Party By [Jim Harper](https://www.cato.org/people/jim-harper) --- SHARE We’re now learning the meaning of a new policy that Americans can’t “willfully” refuse to show ID at airports. [The Consumerist has a write-up](http://consumerist.com/tag/tsa-id-policy/?i=5018844&t=privacy-whats-its-like-to-fly-with-no-id-under-the-tsas-new-regulations) of one man’s experience with IDless travel. It turns out they do a background check on you using, among other things, your political affiliation. That’s a nice window onto what identity-based security is all about: giving the government deep access into all of our personal lives. Of course, this type of security is easy to evade, and the 9/11 plot was structured to evade it. Checking ID cannot catch someone who has no history of wrongdoing. Identity checks at airports require law-abiding American citizens to give up their privacy, including their political affiliations, with essentially no security benefit. ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Technology and Privacy](https://www.cato.org/technology-privacy), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).