A brief history of ID

Once upon a time, you could say you were anyone ...

Once upon a time, you could say you were anyone. People took your word for it or not. Of course, way back then, people usually didn't travel very far, and so everyone you met probably already knew you.

Here's a brief, unscientific history of what happened next:

• I suppose we might start with ancient Greece and China, call it 1,000 B.C.. I don't know that anyone carried ID normally, but with the rise of city-states gave way to the idea that people could be citizens of one place and travel to another.

• Let's fast forward 500 years or so, to the Bible, Nehemiah 2:7 specifically, for an early mention of travel documents: "And I said to the king: If it seem good to the king, let him give me letters to the governors of the country beyond the river, that they convey me over, till I come into Judea ..."

• Actually, The Qin dynasty in China was doing something similar, and maybe even before. If I have any historians of ancient China among my readers (nothing surprises me!), please feel free to fill in the gaps.

• 7th–10th centuries A.D.: During the Islamic Caliphate, some travelers carried amān (safe-conduct documents) or letters of introduction.

• 1414: King Henry V introduced the Safe Conducts Act, an early passport system. Here's what one of them looked like (from the website Passport-Collector.com:

• By the 15th or 16th centuries, the term "passport" was being used in England, having emerged from the French "passeport." Then in 1540, the Privy Council in England formalized passport issuance.

• 1791: King Louis XVI starred in a disastrous case of passport fraud, as he and his family tried to escape the French Revolution with fake documents suggesting they were actually the servants of a Russian noble family. Ironic rumor: Louis was identified because his face is on French coins and currency.

• If your ancestors arrived in the United States before 1880, there's almost no chance anyone asked them for any kind of proof of identity before they entered. However, in 1882, we got the first U.S. requirement for ID: the Chinese Exclusion Act, which required Chinese immigrants to carry identification cards documenting their status, or else risk deportation.

• At the end of World War I (and widespread availability of cameras and paper photographs), countries really started to insist on identity documents for travel. In 1920, the League of Nations had an international conference where they standardized passport designs -- introducing the booklet format still used today.

• A little over 20 years later, one of the greatest movies of all time, Casablanca (1942), came out. Its entire plot was predicated on the fictional idea of "letters of transit" that would have allowed refugees from Nazism to travel across Europe.

• Meanwhile, Americans were moving toward a de facto internal national ID system: driver's licenses (first issued in 1899, but widespread, although with only descriptions -- no photos -- until the 1950s) and social security numbers (1935).

• Apparently, they also asked for ID long ago, in galaxies far, far away: "You don't need to see his identification." (1977)

• In 1984, the U.S. raised the national drinking age to 21. In theory, states could set whatever age they wanted, but those that didn't raise them to 21 lost 10% of national highway funds. This reduced drunk driving and also created a boon in college kids trying to create fake IDs.

• 1989-ish: A certain newsletter writer and operator you know and love may or may not have spent too much time trying to create fakes, less because of a desire to get into bars underage, and more for the challenge and the idea of getting away with something. In that pre-Photoshop era, one trick was to create a poster-board-sized mockup of a driver's license so that you could take a photo in front of it, and then shrink it down to wallet-size.

The whole thing became an illegal but sort-of-tolerated rite of passage: "That's not where we concentrate our efforts, because it's not that big of a problem," a detective told the New York Times in 2003.

• But see: 9/11. While the hijackers didn't use fake IDs, the renewed focus on security afterward revealed lots of lapses. As an example, authorities realized that 21 workers at Newark Liberty International Airport had used fake IDs to get jobs that gave them access to high-security areas.

• States improved their driver's license technology, and counterfitters improved theirs. The U.S. Secret Service set up a fake high-quality ID mill and sold them from 2007 to 2011, only to round up identity thieves and other scammers in massive indictments. Still, it's easier now to get super-high quality fake IDs than it ever has been before, from operations that ship to the U.S. from overseas, "that list convincing replicas by state and take payment in cryptocurrency."

• All of which leads us to today, the date on which, literally 20 years after the law first passed, and 17 years after it was first set to go into effect, if you're in the United States and want to fly on an airplane, you have to have a Real ID.

For most of us, that means a compliant driver's license or state ID, unless you're like me and live in New Jersey (70% of us here don't have these new driver's licenses yet), and will have to use passports until we get around to updating our licenses.

Is it all a good idea? A waste of money? An arms race that's already been outrun?

• Final bullet point: It took about five seconds of Google searching for me to realize that those overseas fake ID mills are already churning out Real ID versions, apparently with all of the scannable working tech.

Hey look at that—up to the minute after I’d written everything above, we have another bullet point. (Find me another newsletter that gives you the history of a subject like this from 1,000 B.C. to 45 minutes ago.)

• Travelers who aren’t REAL ID compliant by the deadline [today] "will be allowed to fly," Kristi Noem, head of the Homeland Security department said Tuesday. Those who still lack an identification that complies with the new law “may be diverted to a different line, have an extra step,” Noem said. (NBC Philadelphia)

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7 other things worth knowing today

• By the time you read this, 133 cardinal electors from all over the world will have gathered in the Sistine Chapel for the most clandestine of ballots. Barred from leaving and with zero contact with the outside world, they must vote — and vote, and perhaps vote again — until they select the next leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics. (NBC News)

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told President Trump in a White House meeting on Tuesday that Canada "is not for sale," and never will it be. "Never say never," Trump responded, to which Carney repeatedly said: "Never." Ahead of the meeting, Trump criticized Canada on Truth Social, but during the meeting he said, "regardless of anything, we're gonna be friends with Canada." (Axios)

• India said early Wednesday that it had struck nine sites in Pakistan and on Pakistan’s side of the disputed Kashmir region, two weeks after more than two dozen civilians were killed in a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistani military officials said at least eight people were killed and 35 others wounded after six places were hit in Punjab Province and its part of Kashmir. The attack on Punjab, in Pakistani territory outside the contested region, represented an escalation in the conflict between the two nuclear-armed countries. (NY Times)

• Eighteen months into Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, officials the government has now approved plans to seize and hold territory in Gaza, a move that could expose Israel to additional legal requirements toward the civilian population and risk ensnaring the military in a long-term quagmire. (WSJ)

• Tariffs are hitting Amazon sellers hard. Here’s how they’re responding. (Reuters)

• Tesla Inc. sales kept sliding across Europe’s biggest electric-car markets in April, despite the company rolling out an updated version of its most popular vehicle. The company registered only 512 new vehicles last month in the UK, down 62% from a year earlier. In Germany — by far the biggest EV market among European Union member states — Tesla’s sales fell 46% even as overall electric-car registrations jumped 53% last month. (Bloomberg)

• Rwanda says it's in "early talks" with Washington regarding taking in third-country nationals deported from the U.S. Critics say Rwanda's abysmal rights record under President Paul Kagame means it's no place to resettle people. (NPR)

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Thanks for reading. Photos galore courtesy of public domain law around the world. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.