Virginia is the fourteenth state to offer residents the option of using mobile driver’s licenses at airports equipped with digital ID readers—using facial recognition— instead of traditional means of identification, like a driver’s license or passport.
The states in blue have TSA-approved mobile IDs. The green dots are airports with CAT-2 readers that ... [+]
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced Tuesday it is accepting Virginia-issued mobile driver’s licenses at security checkpoints with digital ID readers nationwide.
To use a digital driver’s license at a TSA checkpoint, the passenger’s flight must be departing from an airport where the agency’s credential authorization technology (CAT-2) readers are available.
For passengers who opt to use the CAT-2 reader, the system will take a live photo and use facial recognition technology to compare it to the image stored on the individual’s digital ID.
The digital ID must be issued by one of the 14 states whose mobile driver’s licenses are compliant with TSA technology—Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Hawaii, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Utah, Virginia West Virginia—as well as those from Puerto Rico.
TSA-approved digital IDs are most often available through a state-issued app or platforms such as Apple Wallet, Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet.
TSA encourages travelers to continue to carry their physical driver’s license or photo ID.
A TSA factsheet says facial recognition technology “will not be used for surveillance or any law enforcement purpose,” presenting digital readers as a more secure, faster alternative to ID verification than the current manual process. The agency website says that after a CAT-2 reader takes a photo of the traveler, “each passenger’s live photo and the personally identifiable information collected from their digital ID will be overwritten when the next passenger is scanned.”
A bipartisan group of 12 senators, including Jeff Merkley (D-Wa.), John Kennedy (R-La,), Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) sent a letter in November 2024 urging the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General to investigate TSA’s expanding use of facial recognition technology at airports. The lawmakers cited concerns about the potential erosion of passenger privacy and warned that, should biometric screening become mandatory at some future point, “this program could become one of the largest federal surveillance databases overnight without authorization from Congress.”
430 airports. That’s how many U.S. airports will eventually have CAT-2 readers. There are currently 230 airports in the country equipped with the technology, according to a TSA press release.
Here’s Where You Can Fly With A Digital ID On Your Phone (Forbes)
Here’s Why Senators Want To Ban The TSA’s Facial Recognition Screening At Airports (Forbes)