Also, even if you could get one, it's going to cost thousands, so it's not worth it for mass scamming. Also, you'd have to show up in person and risk immediate arrest if the forgery gets detected.

What I'm hearing is our idiotic age limit on drinking makes ID forgery lucrative enough to outweigh the risks. Therefore: The drinking age in the USA is largely responsible for making identity theft easier.

I'm kidding, another major hole in this is a unique nexus of states having different ID/Driving License implementations and the fact that a vast portion of our citizens lack a passport.

Also, I'm not sure where the money is in the current system, but every time the USA tries to create a national ID all sorts of astroturfed nonsense comes out about Big Brother and COMMNUNISM!!

It's not, I've held several. For EU countries.

>unless you've got contacts with organized crime

Or an internet connection!

>Getting a fake ID gives limited benefits and means jailtime even if you don't attempt to use it

My personal experience has been very different. But I guess this'll vary from country to country.

>there's not much demand among "normal people" for it

How many undocumented migrants are there in Europe again? Are those people not "normal"?

>Also, even if you could get one, it's going to cost thousands

Nonsense, hundreds.

As in an actual national ID that can be used to open bank accounts and cross borders, or some other sort of non-official ID that might be good enough to get you into bars?

Edit: or given the thread context you mean forgeries of the same level as US driver licenses for under age drinking, which is quite possible, but such forgery is readily distinguishable by anyone who has actually seen real EU ID card.

These.

>ID-2 format laminated cardstock

Not these, I've seen a plenty of US ones like this.

I am talking about forgeries specifically sold for the purpose of opening bank accounts.

And I'm also heavily doubting that an internet connection is enough to get a forged ID card. It does elude me how one would do that without some sort of special machines.

Even the reddit fakeid community seems to have some pretty good EU ids.

However, purchasing a thousand SSNs and automating signups sounds hell of a lot easier than purchasing a thousand passports and physically visiting the bank offices.

For example, banks will photocopy your passport and verify the signature on it to ensure that it's correct.

(Basically, there's an algorithm used to compute a 30 digit hash on the ID or passport, which is computed from the IDs content and a secret seed. Anyone can verify this hash easily with open algorithms and tools, but only the government can create them).