But if John Doe wants information on someone named John Doe who "showed ID" to claim the money, he's just asking about "himself".

I kinda get the point. If someone impersonates you, that information should not be protected because it's supposedly you.

Unless fake John asks for info on real John.

But that's more an issue of identity confirmation.

I believe there has to be a reasonably high bar that a person has to clear before a company should be even allowed to assume they are who they're claiming to be, but once that bar is cleared no information regarding or directly linked to the person in question should be withheld from them.

But then, hasn't the company already shown that it's bad at identity confirmation? Why would you expect them to be better at it in the other direction?

Isn't this problem solvable by looking at it differently? To me, the problem is that it's easy for scammers to impersonate someone. What if there was a way to reasonably check a person's identity in a standard way accessible to everyone without going through hoops?

> What if there was a way to reasonably check a person's identity [...]

I would expect my relatives to validate my identity before sending money to me via any new method.

> What if there was a way to reasonably check a person's identity in a standard way accessible to everyone without going through hoops?

There is, or there are. Western Union just doesn't care about it, because it costs money and their fee still gets paid if the scam works.

That ideal won’t come true for a very long while. I appreciate your idealism, but for better or worse, we need a reasonable and attainable solution in the interim.