Real ID is a legislative wisp from the Bush-era War on Terror

The Real ID moment is here, the Y2K panic of 2025. Today is the deadline to update your driver’s license, leading to frantic predictions of something no one alive has ever seen before – long lines at the DMV. Will the center hold, or will the need to have a digitally embossed star on a piece of plastic finally bring the Republic down once and for all?

I predict a quiet day. The fact is, though you now need a Real ID, you technically don’t need one today, unless you do. People must now deploy these enhanced IDs any time they’re entering a federal building, which most people don’t do on the reg, or a nuclear-power plant, which most people never do, and, most significantly in the lives of the general public, if they’re trying to get through airport security.

Even then, there are other forms of ID you can use if you haven’t gone Real ID yet, including your passport. It’s estimated that only 17 percent of people don’t have an alternate form of ID, but that’s got to be significantly lower for people who are boarding airplanes. And if you missed the Real ID deadline today, but aren’t flying, until, say, July, you can always get one Thursday, or next week, or whenever. It’s not as though there are going to be Real ID checkpoints on your morning commute.

Secretary Kristi Noem of the Department of Homeland Security said in a press conference yesterday that 81 percent of “travelers” already have Real ID compliant driver’s licenses. Those who don’t can still travel but “may be diverted to a different line.” As we all know, no one ever diverts you to a different line at the airport. 

And why do they even care at the airport, and why now? You might be shocked to find out, as I was, that Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005. That’s right, 20 years ago. Desperate Housewives was on TV. Mariah Carey had the number-one song. Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith was the most popular movie in the country, and that movie just enjoyed a popular two-decade revival screening.

Real ID is the last reliquary of the Bush-era War on Terror. There’s still terror, and we’re still ostensibly at war with it, though it’s no longer the number-one bogeyman in the headlines on most days. I suppose that means we’ve fought it with some success. But the real War on Terror legacy for most Americans has been bureaucratic hassle, brought to you by the Department of Homeland Security, that boondoggle of boondoggles, which has finally decided to occupy your wallet two decades later.

Now, DHS demands yet another block of your time, unless it doesn’t. My Real ID arrived in the mail, since my driver’s license expired last year, and I applied for a new one. A friend of mine got his Real ID because he lost his driver’s license when he got drunk in a strip club on Super Bowl Sunday. The state sent him a replacement, and now he can go to the airport whenever he wishes. That’s about how serious this is.

Again, let’s re-emphasize, Real ID is a legislative wisp from when Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were still alive and when Netflix came in the mail. It’s dusty, useless nonsense. And, frankly, it doesn’t even accomplish its prime directive. I moseyed over to a cybersecurity-issues website, which itself looks like something from 2005. These modern Real IDs don’t even contain an RFID, something that’s on any standard-issue credit card, which means people can still fake them. “A genuine Real ID carries a lot of trust, but many people who rely on that trust will have difficulty detecting a forged Real ID card,” says a man named “Bud.”

Since this is 2025, the year of Revenge of the Sith’s re-release, 15 states have already obviated the need for Real ID, creating MDLs, or Mobile Driver’s Licenses, that you can store in a phone app, and even in your Apple Wallet. Within the next few years, we’ll all have them, and long DMV lines will just be a distant, annoying memory. It’s what “Bud” calls “an unforgeable, untamperable set of biographics with a photograph capturing their face in an unforgeable way. Then you’ve got a really powerful way for citizens to assert their identities.”

In a land forged on individualism and self-determination, all we’ve really ever wanted is to powerfully assert our identities. And at last, Americans will finally be safe from Osama bin Laden.