I use a PIV Badge as a FAA contractor. We're told to never use the PIV badge as a means of identification anywhere. The documentation doubles down by mentioning to never use it as an ID at an airport. I've been told it is because FAA employees would use it and the airline workers would then freak out that the employee was there to inspect them.
> We're told to never use the PIV badge as a means of identification anywhere
I must be misunderstanding what you mean by this, because I'm struggling to fathom what possible use a "personal identity verification badge" could possibly have _other_ than as a means of identifying yourself.
I’m a contractor for DHS and heard a rumor a long time ago that you could get special treatment with TSA agents when using your DHS badge as identification. Yeah no. Doesn’t work :) Southwest did give me a free drink one time though and thanked me for my service - they saw the laptop and piv plugged in while I was working on the plane and thought I was military. I did correct them but also took the free drink.
The PIN is required to get the card to perform cryptographic operations, not list certificates -- although the certificates aren't a secret, within DOD there's sites like DOD411 to get anyone's certificate, though I haven't checked for an FPKI equivalent.
The real reason not to use your PIV for ID in random places is that it's meant to be used as an ID for you acting as your official capacity. This can also be seen in the case where people have multiple PIVs to represent their multiple identities, like National Guard who may have a PIV as a contractor and a PIV as a National Guard -- they would use the correct one depending on what capacity they are acting, or none if it's not part of their official duties.
