End of shoe removal and REAL ID mark 2025’s security shifts

Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people in hijackings of commercial aircraft departing from Boston, Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., the federal government’s airport-security apparatus is anchored by the Transportation Security Administration and is increasingly driven by biometric and artificial-intelligence tools.

The TSA was created about two months after the attacks, predating the Department of Homeland Security that now oversees it by roughly a year. The Aviation and Transportation Security Act, passed by Congress in November 2001, required TSA agents to staff airports across the country and screen every passenger and piece of baggage. According to Ryan Propis, vice president of security and facilitation with the U.S. Travel Association and former deputy staff director and general counsel for the House Committee on Homeland Security, biometric technology has become one of the most significant innovations in airport security.

“Biometric technology is one of the most significant innovations in airport security,” Propis said. “In 2026, a key method of assessing the safety of passengers is knowing who is flying before they even arrive at the gate.”

Facial recognition is the central biometric tool. Propis said agencies including Customs and Border Protection and TSA now hold significant traveler data before passengers reach screening. “When you look across multiple agencies but especially a [Customs and Border Patrol] and a TSA, there’s a significant amount of data that those agencies have on travelers, on aircraft, on planes, on cargo, on bags,” he said. “They know a lot more information up front than they did before. So you’ve got a lot of the information that’s shared from airports but mostly from airlines around who these travelers are, where they’ve been before, whether they’ve had any security incidents in the past, what their immigration status is.”

Information-sharing agreements between the United States and foreign governments are now a key tenet of modern national security, according to UPI. After the attacks, governments removed rules and regulations that stood in the way of sharing certain intelligence, enabling data about passengers and potential risks to move domestically and internationally.

Trusted-traveler programs including TSA PreCheck have aided both travelers and airports in moving people through security quickly, with travelers who volunteer additional identifying information on the front end able to bypass long lines at the airport because they have already been vetted, according to UPI. Between 250 and 300 people move through the average TSA checkpoint each hour, according to UPI.

The shift in screening procedures has been pronounced. Before September 11, passenger screening was handled by private agencies commissioned by individual airports, and travelers could accompany friends and family to gates without holding a ticket themselves. Few items were prohibited from luggage, and travelers could reach their gate and be ready for takeoff in short order — in contrast to the more arduous post-attack experience.

After the attacks, the passenger experience changed markedly. Travelers were long required to remove their shoes and belts at TSA checkpoints. Restrictions proliferated on liquids, electronic devices, sharp items and certain tools. Not all of these were direct responses to 9/11 — the shoe-removal rule came in response to Richard Reid’s attempted shoe-bombing of a transatlantic flight months after the attacks.

“Generally, and the same with establishing the TSA, everything has been pretty much reactive to either a security incident or a potential incident of specific threats,” Propis said. “Removing jackets, taking laptops out of bags, those were all in response to specific credible threats.”

Twenty-five years on, the onus on travelers has loosened some while public trust in airport safety methods has grown, according to UPI.

Two of the most prominent shifts came in 2025. TSA ended the shoe-removal requirement, with then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem saying technological advancements gave the agency confidence it could end the requirement while maintaining its security standards. The same year, the federal REAL ID requirement took effect for boarding any federally regulated commercial aircraft, accessing certain federal facilities and entering nuclear power plants.

The REAL ID Act passed Congress in 2005 as part of an emergency appropriations bill responding to the 9/11 Commission Report, which found that all of the attackers had used fraudulent identification to board the planes. The cards require presentation of documents proving a person’s legal name, date of birth, Social Security number, residence and lawful citizenship status. The cards themselves include security features intended to prevent duplication, counterfeiting or tampering.

Earlier in 2026, TSA adopted the ConfirmID fee, allowing travelers without a REAL ID-compliant identification to pay $45 for additional identity-verification screening. The Department of Homeland Security’s cost estimates for implementing the REAL ID Act ranged from approximately $10 billion to more than $20 billion.

The path to REAL ID was not without opposition. States and advocacy organizations across the political spectrum criticized the proposal as functionally creating a national identification card, raising concerns about surveillance and the burden it would place on states to implement. Despite that pushback, the requirement was adopted.

A 2024 U.S. Travel Association survey found that about 80% of travelers support the use of biometric technology at TSA checkpoints, with support showing relative parity across political ideologies. A majority of those surveyed also supported identity verification as a measure to prevent terrorism.

Looking ahead, Propis said artificial intelligence is poised to reshape baggage screening in the same way biometrics reshaped passenger identification. The technology could allow bags to be scanned without an agent manually assessing each one, with the system flagging only those that need review.

“There’s a lot of amazing technology, especially on the AI and algorithm development side of things that I think are really the next iteration of a game-changing impact,” Propis said. “That’s the same technology that underpins biometrics and facial matching. But when you apply that to bag scanning and on person scanning, you can basically double the throughput of the amount of folks that are going through a checkpoint.”

The U.S. Travel Association has pressed for the technology to be deployed first to PreCheck travelers. “We would love to see some of those technologies rolled out, especially for pre-check travelers,” Propis said. “Eventually when those algorithms get stronger and that software is strong enough, it can assist officers in letting people carry on liquids like water, breast milk and formula.”

Propis framed the trajectory as a deliberate departure from the post-attack reflex to add friction at the checkpoint. “Historically, if you were making a security change, usually if it was pro-security it was probably going to be ‘bad for the traveler,’” he said. “We’re at a place now where you’re seeing changes that are being made that are pro-technology and pro-innovation that are actually improving security or at least maintaining security and actually improving the operation and the traveler experience.”

Propis pointed to a broader shift inside TSA itself. “Taking a step back and viewing it from what it looked like immediately after 9/11 to where things have evolved to, there’s always more innovation to be had and better ideas out there,” he said. “You’re seeing a mindset shift with TSA over the last few years that technology and innovation can really transform what they’re doing.”