Seednote
Person identity
A person is identifiable in their own right
A person’s own persistent identity, independent of any employer, membership, or Semantic Space.
RSM ID Learning Center2 min read
A person is a resource referent in their own right, and person is one of the twelve registered naming kinds. A person's RID identifies the person — not an employer, a membership, an account, or the Semantic Space that first recorded them — and it stays the same while those relationships begin and end. It can exist without being publicly discoverable, so having an identity need not expose anyone.
What a person's RID is not matters as much as what it is. It is not a login, a credential, a biometric, a directory entry, or proof of legal identity, and it does not guarantee that each human being holds exactly one. Authentication, identity proofing, and credentials remain separate functions that can refer to the person by RID.
Example
Anika, a grower in the fictional Cedar Valley, has the illustrative RID 451.9J0RFXDGKFYE4CXS (Anika). She works a season for a cooperative, leaves, and joins a growers' community. Each affiliation is a dated relationship recorded by someone; her RID is unchanged throughout, and no organization sits on the path to it. Her record is never shown resolving publicly.
A common misconception
“A person gets an identity from the organization that registers them.” An issuer registers an identity record; it does not become the person's employer, sponsor, or owner, and an affiliation is never a condition of the identity. Issuance authority is an infrastructure trust mechanism, not a relationship with the person.
Related concepts
The journey in full is A Person Before an Affiliation. Why no space is a person's source is argued in A person does not belong to a space, and how resolution protects people in Identifying without exposing. Registrars are covered under issuance authority.
In the specification
Resources, including persons: Document 08 §2.1. Identity is not authentication: §11.1. Privacy-sensitive resources: §11.3. Registered kinds: §18.3.