The government requires the bank to search your identity documents to open an account, even when there is no individualized suspicion you've broken the law as to why your papers need to be searched, as part of the KYC regulations passed post 9/11. Technically it's not in the statute that they actually search your documents, but rather enforced through a byzantine series of federal regulatory frameworks that basically require them to do something that approximates "industry standard" KYC compliance which ends up being, verifying the customer through inspecting their identity and perhaps other documents. This is why i.e. when I was homeless even my passport couldn't open an account anywhere -- they wanted my passport plus some document showing an address to satisfy KYC requirements.

Maybe I will have more energy for it tomorrow, I've been through this probably a couple dozen times on HN and I don't have the energy to go through the whole rigmarole today because usually it results in 2-3 days of someone fiercely disagreeing down some long chain and in the end I provide all the evidence and by that point no one is paying attention and it just goes into this pyrrhic victory where I get drained dry just for no one to give a shit. I should probably consolidate it into a blog post or something.