The thief would have to physically resemble the victim's photo, height, age, gender, etc, which is some added defense in depth. For instance it would be hard for most males to pass themselves off as a typical female.
> The thief would have to physically resemble the victim's photo
Why? Show up to a government station with your birth certificate, SSN, some telephone and utility bills, and they'll take the thiefs picture and put it on an identity card with your name on it.
That sounds incredibly bad for a first-world country. If that was the case, I'd argue that the entire country is in collapse. As you then have no control over foreigners impersonating locals and manipulating something as serious as elections, never-mind bank-fraud.
Edit: Point being, this needs to be fixed ASAP if you are to move your country into the future. Fix the regulatory/state hurdles that prevent it from happening, and get yourselves National Identification that's secure. Things will flow positively from there.
They don't use the SSN to check for prior IDs issued by other states and/or the Feds, and compare the applicant's photo/gender/age/height/eye color, etc to them first?
About twenty five years ago a bank allowed someone to cash checks with my name on them with all the correct account info on them as well, but was a different race and gender than I am (the banks had video of the customer). They did this about a dozen times for checks for what I assume was just under the amount that would flag it (about $2000) to empty my account over the course of about an hour, using different drive throughs at different branches in Houston, I lived in Austin at the time and had never visited a branch in Houston.
Why? Show up to a government station with your birth certificate, SSN, some telephone and utility bills, and they'll take the thiefs picture and put it on an identity card with your name on it.