It is weird. A possible justification is that there are terrorist watch lists and no fly lists, and we check your name against those lists to make sure you are not a bad guy. ID is required to make sure you are who you say you are, so the check against the lists is accurate.<p>Of course, there is no complete list of bad guys who want to do bad things. If you are set on doing harm and are minimally organized, you can probably find someone not on the lists. And there are false positives on the lists we have.