The bottom line is that I found Apple Support to be , and I'm surprised the attackers in the Mat Honan / Gizmodo incident were able to social engineer their way into his iCloud account. It took me over a year to "social engineer" my way into my own Apple ID.
Perhaps that says more about my lack of social engineering skills than it does about Apple security measures, but I can vouch for the fact that accessing someone's Apple account is no simple feat.