Dan, the photo ID is a start, and is better than nothing, but we need a more robust system. A good mate of mine in the 1970s was a redcap in BA and wore his wife's photo ID card for years going in and out of Heathrow. She was Nigerian Hausa. He was good Saxon stock.
I realise that in most airlines, even in dodgy countries with poor oversight, there is a low risk of fraud. But there are countries in ICAO that are well known for providing false documentation for aviation. We here are on about pilots licences, as it is a pilots web site but you have read here of the appalling problem with maintenance licences. And then you get to the licencing of airfields, airworthiness, security, anywhere that requires a government "certificate" to operate.
The system is Broke. It needs fixing. In the meantime all we can do at the coal face is keep our eyes open and use what powers we have left as pilots to inform the people in our organisations who have no knowledge of the scams out there of what to look out for. I think we both remember the two simulator instructors who were inducted and employed by HR as pilots and did a wonderful job in the ground school and simulator. (Flight Operations had been taken out of the interview process some months before by a non pilot HR director who said it was his position to ensure who was hired and fired in the airline). It was only on base training that it was realised that neither had been in an aircraft for many years and had lied their way into the right hand seat.
BTW I still love your handle, being from Yorkshire and all that.