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Viewgraph · 7 frames

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.

Viewgraph7 frames

A person’s independent identity

Journey A · a person

A person before an affiliation

Anika, a fictional grower in Cedar Valley, is identifiable before any employer, community, or space describes her.

RSM ID Learning Center

rsmid.org

Document 08 v1.1 §2.1, §2.2 — Cedar Valley is fictional; nothing has been issuedRSM ID Learning Center · informative material01 / 07
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  1. Journey A · a personA person before an affiliationAnika, a fictional grower in Cedar Valley, is identifiable before any employer, community, or space describes her.Source: Document 08 v1.1 §2.1, §2.2 — Cedar Valley is fictional; nothing has been issued
  2. Identity firstAffiliations are arrows out of the personEach is a dated relationship with its own source. Any can end without touching her identity.Anika's person RID has relationships to Cedar Farm Cooperative, for which she worked in 2031, to Cedar Valley Growers, which she joined in 2032, and to her own personal space, which she administers. None of them is on the path to her identity.Source: Document 08 v1.1 §2.2, §7.4 — relationships are hypothetical assertions
  3. Over timeMemberships change; the identity does notHer RID carries no employer, community, space, or name, so none of them can go stale inside it.2031 · a season with the cooperativeAn employment relationship begins and ends.2032 · joins Cedar Valley GrowersA membership assertion appears.Throughout · one RID451.9J0RFXDGKFYE4CXS identifies Anika, and only Anika.Source: Document 08 v1.1 §2.2 — Cedar Valley timeline, fictional
  4. Many accountsSeveral spaces make claims about herEach keeps its own source and policy. Sharing her RID means they are about the same person, not that they agree.Three independently governed spaces, the cooperative's operations space, the Valley Soil Observatory space, and Anika's personal space, each make claims about the same person RID under their own policies.Source: Document 08 v1.1 §7.4, §11.3 — spaces are fictional
  5. What an RID is notAn identifier, not a key or a proofKnowing her RID lets no one act as her, see her records, or conclude who she legally is.Not a login or credentialIt authenticates no one and grants nothing.Not proof of legal identityIdentity proofing is another institution's job.Not a uniqueness guaranteeIt does not promise one RID per human being.Aliases are not principalsA friendly name never proves authority to act.Source: Document 08 v1.1 §2.0, §11.1, §11.5
  6. PrivacyAn unpermitted request learns nothing at allNot even that a person record exists. A permitted one receives only minimal identity metadata.A request for Anika's RID from an unpermitted requester returns the same 404 as an unknown identifier. A requester permitted by policy receives minimal identity metadata, and each space then applies its own policy.Source: Document 08 v1.1 §11.3, §18.7 — no resolver operates; illustrative
  7. Still to be specifiedIndependence is a requirement; the pathway is openSome registered issuer will record her identity — as registrar, never as employer or owner.Design requirementSource: Document 08 v1.1 §2.0, §11.3 — SPEC-01 and SPEC-02 are open questions

Sources and provenance

Normative basis

This viewgraph is an informative explanation. Where it and the specifications differ, Documents 08 and 09 v1.1 govern.

What it contains

Document 08 v1.1 · normative
Grounded directly in Document 08, the controlling standard. Cited by section.
Interpretation
Explanation or design rationale written for this Learning Center. It does not add requirements.
Hypothetical example
An illustrative scenario. Its identifiers are examples or fictional; none has been issued.
Proposed, not operational
Something the specifications propose — a host, a prefix, a federation, a service — that does not exist yet.

Related

Pathway: Naming and Authority · Journey: A person · For everyone · Revised 2026-10-10 · Content ID viewgraph.person-independent-identity (a page identifier on this site, not an RID)