People who have a passport card (or book) but don't have another RealID (either because they never bothered, or because their state wanted to charge extra for it). Or, as happened to me once, whose driver's license is expired (only by a couple of days, but that's enough).
> either because they never bothered, or because their state wanted to charge extra for it
Or because their state barely managed to rolled it out at all and since they already have a passport card it makes no huge difference now. Not arguing just annoyed at my state.
2014: Who would not carry their wallet and solely rely on their iPhone to pay for things when running errands?
I understand it's cool to be cynical on HN but: this is a step in the direction for a future world where a lot of countries will let you in with a digital passport.
Now whether you think that's a good thing or not, that's a different story.
I use a passport card, doesn’t contain my home address and works for age/identity verification and TSA (domestic air travel). With that said, TSA IDEMIA hardware that has to make a passport query to identity proof at a checkpoint is a few seconds slower than a driver's license or Global Entry card if that matters to you.
I've never used anything else other than my passport to travel domestically. Main reason being that when I first moved to the US, I was couch surfing and didn't have a permanent address. When I finally got my own apartment and went to get a state ID card, the experience at the DMV made me not want to return to get a real ID card, so I just use my passport and don't have to worry about whether it's in compliance or not.
I use a Global Entry card or US Passport Card. I do not have a "REAL ID". Both my GE card and Passport Card don't have my address, which protects my identity from prying TSA eyes.
I carry my passport for every trip, then leave it in my hotel. Thinking is that if I get robbed/lose my drivers license, I can still board the plane for the return trip home.
Passport card is made for you! They're not officially accepted for enough things in USA that losing it is a major stress, it doesn't have your address on the front, and big plus: foreign countries who want to see a "national id" (because they have one and think this is normal) who don't accept a passport will happily accept a passport card (source: my own experience living in South Asia)
Let’s not normalise using your phone, containing all your secrets, as ID. And especially not interacting with it in front of unrestrained representatives of state authority.
Just carry a bit of inert - as inert as possible - plastic instead
You don't have to share your phone, or its secrets, to use this. At the TSA checkpoint, there's a screen that says specifically what information they're asking for, you tap, and your phone shares that. You never lose physical control of your phone. No one even looks at the screen. It's basically tap-to-pay for authentication.
Personally, I fully expect this to gradually become the primary method by which all ID is issued and used. Cell phones are already effectively mandatory to function in our society, so whether you need to target a protest of potential dissidents or an audience of potential customers, it's the perfect one stop shop for our newly emerging highly integrated state+industry power structure.
I had to get my license renewed the other day and I watched an older person pull out a 2000s coolpix digital camera and bring up a picture of the barcode on the screen on the back to sign in.
Does the TSA have any authority to even access your phone? Sure with suspicion they could refer you to the police or something where normal legal standards apply. But they aren't DHS/Customs staff who in the past could demand devices for unloading.
These days, you'll have to keep the plastic in some kind of metallic sleeve. The RFID chip in US Green Cards, and I imagine passport cards as well, is designed to be readable from across a room.
But not from the phone, if you put it the wrong way around.
An iPhone can read the RFID but you have to know that it is NOT where the icon is, but actually on the backside of the hard thick page (or something, I forget).
This is exciting, and probably a subtle admission from Apple that states aren't playing ball with their Drivers ID in Wallet approach. Even Apple's home state California initially limited digital IDs to their bottom of the barrel, garbage grade ID app (seriously go look at "mDL California"/"CA DMV Wallet" app, even the splash image is pixelated garbage) before finally allowing IDs to be added to Wallet the Apple way.
This lazy critique has been around for years, but it’s never been true. Just like the drivers license, you don’t need to unlock the phone.
> When you present your license or ID in person, after you authenticate using Face ID or Touch ID, your ID information is presented digitally through encrypted communication between your iPhone or Apple Watch and the identity reader, so you don’t need to unlock, show, or hand over your device. If your device is locked when you present your ID, it stays locked after you present your ID.
This is also a fundamentally naive criticism because we’re at a point where anyone worried about their unlocked device knows that the alternative ranges from being detained for a few hours and missing their flight, to spending a week or two sleeping on a concrete floor in an overcrowded detention center, to being shipped off to a lawless concentration camp in El Salvador. Keeping your phone locked or powered off is no substitute for returning to a constitutional democracy.
The thing I don’t understand about using my phone for identity verification at TSA is that I also need my boarding pass at TSA, which is also on my phone. I can either hand them my drivers license and scan my boarding pass in parallel (fast), hand them a paper boarding pass and maybe use the digital drivers license assuming that airport can support that (waste of paper though), or I can do both on my phone and make the entire interaction take twice as long? What’s the point, genuinely?
At all of the airports I've been to in the last year or two I haven't needed a boarding pass to get through security. Just ID.
That being said every airport I've flown through for the last 2-ish years has had digital IDs or ID scanners so at smaller, or laggard, airports they may still be doing that.
I flew out of PHX Sky Harbor back in February this year, and still needed my boarding pass through security. I’m glad to hear that’s slowly changing though, I’ll be glad when we catch up.
This was a similar issue with android/apple pay at the beginning (at least in the states where card tapping was less common). I expect given enough time it will become more common to verify your age at bars/stores, get through airports, etc with just a phone/watch tap.
Airlines just use your face these days. Immigration will want to see the passport (unless you’re returning and have global entry then they just use your face).
Readit News
Or because their state barely managed to rolled it out at all and since they already have a passport card it makes no huge difference now. Not arguing just annoyed at my state.
I understand it's cool to be cynical on HN but: this is a step in the direction for a future world where a lot of countries will let you in with a digital passport.
Now whether you think that's a good thing or not, that's a different story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_passport_card
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/passports/need-pa...
You need it in countries with haphazard kidnappings - like the US.
Just carry a bit of inert - as inert as possible - plastic instead
Which, I oddly had respect for.
An iPhone can read the RFID but you have to know that it is NOT where the icon is, but actually on the backside of the hard thick page (or something, I forget).
As someone who has a passport card, I can confirm it definitely has an RFID chip in it. Ironically they come in a protective sleeve.
Deleted Comment
elaborate on that more
https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/politics/chris-krebs-cbp-glob...
> When you present your license or ID in person, after you authenticate using Face ID or Touch ID, your ID information is presented digitally through encrypted communication between your iPhone or Apple Watch and the identity reader, so you don’t need to unlock, show, or hand over your device. If your device is locked when you present your ID, it stays locked after you present your ID.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/118260
This is also a fundamentally naive criticism because we’re at a point where anyone worried about their unlocked device knows that the alternative ranges from being detained for a few hours and missing their flight, to spending a week or two sleeping on a concrete floor in an overcrowded detention center, to being shipped off to a lawless concentration camp in El Salvador. Keeping your phone locked or powered off is no substitute for returning to a constitutional democracy.
https://www.afar.com/magazine/no-need-to-show-tsa-your-board...
That being said every airport I've flown through for the last 2-ish years has had digital IDs or ID scanners so at smaller, or laggard, airports they may still be doing that.