This. I can't believe how the media/government has completely bought into the fact that the creditor (bank) failed to do proper due diligence in order to verify who they are extending credit to. And to make it seem like it's the fault of the person being impersonated is absurd. SSN as a password was the single biggest banking failure ever committed, aside from what happened in the 2000's mortgage debacle.
The system runs on abstractions, which it inherently takes for granted as air-tight. Looking from inside the system, the abstraction of "identity" can never appear imperfect. So the observed behavior is described in terms of its internally-seen effects - an identity has been coopted by a bad actor, ergo it must have been stolen.
I'm not endorsing the mislabeling, just explaining how it came about. Obviously sanity, sustainability, and individual freedom depend on pushing back against that system's prescriptions and "keeping it real".
