The engineering and statistical tools exist, from probabilistic risk assessment (PRA) to meta-data analytics.

FORBES: New York, Black Swans, Blackouts and Anti-Fragile Grids

Verifying identity comes down to making the probabilistic determination that the risk of the claimant NOT in fact being the one he claims to be is vanishingly small or, at least, too negligible to be worth bothering about.

ECONOMIST: Fake ID cards