Identity journey 1 of 6 · Anika, an independent grower
A person
Who is Anika before any business, government system, community, or employer describes her?
A person is a referent in her own right. Follow Anika from identity through changing affiliations, consent-governed claims, and resolution that never discloses more than policy permits.
What this journey shows
- A person’s identity does not depend on an employer, membership, sponsor, or Semantic Space.
- Affiliations, aliases, and claims are relationships and records that change while the identity persists.
- Resolution can confirm nothing at all about a person to a requester who is not permitted to know.
What it does not imply
- That an unaffiliated person can already obtain an RID: the issuance pathway is not yet specified.
- That an RID verifies legal identity, authenticates anyone, or guarantees one RID per human being.
- That person records are publicly discoverable.
Steps
Journal
A Person Before an Affiliation
A person is a referent in her own right, identifiable before any employer, community, or Semantic Space describes her. This Journal follows Anika, a fictional grower, through issuance, names, changing affiliations, consent, disclosure, and dispute — and sets out the threat model a personal identity must answer without pretending the protocol already does.
Viewgraph
A person’s independent identity
How a person keeps one identity while memberships change, how claims about her stay with their sources, why her RID is not a credential, and how resolution protects her.
Seednote
Person identity
A person’s own persistent identity, independent of any employer, membership, or Semantic Space.
Fieldnote
A person does not belong to a space
Why a person's identity is independent of the organizations they work for, the communities they join, and the Semantic Spaces that hold knowledge about them — and what would break if any of those became its source.
Fieldnote
Identifying without exposing
Why RSM ID separates having an identity from being discoverable, how resolution withholds even the existence of a restricted referent, and what an identifier's randomness does and does not protect.
Seednote
Issuance authority
A registered issuer permitted to issue identities within a delegated namespace.
Fieldnote
Why identity is not ownership
Why RSM ID keeps issuance authority, legal ownership, custody, stewardship, and a person's own autonomy as separate relationships — for farms, watersheds, communities, and people alike — and what would break if it did not.
All journeys and pathwaysRelated pathway: B, Naming and AuthorityNext journey: An organization and a community