328 R. Vecellio Segate restart from scratch is counterproductive and unlikely to be accepted; however, in highly unstable regions and insofar as vulnerable or especially “exposed” segments of the population are concerned, one could devise a system of pre-emptive and voluntary protection whereby specific individuals could opt-out from the identity system should regime change materialise – either temporarily, or until they are able to flee and receive credible assurances from the newly installed rulers. Either way, i.e. the refugee keeping their previous identity or embracing a new one, identity duplication is of aid to no party, as the person could then “free ride” on the two identities to escape regulatory reach from both the “original” and the “subsequent” regulators, governments, administrations, and courts. Also, from a law-enforcement standpoint, identity duplication greatly enhances the likelihood that transborder criminals are caught later than they would have been, had they been endowed with just one identity – at least, one at a time.10 In borderline contexts, identity duplication is also to be prevented in order to defeat the “ghost beneficiaries” phenomenon associated with shelter and aid provision across refugee camps and similar arrangements. I acknowledge, however, that from the standpoint of humanitarian organisations it is in fact timesaving and operationally convenient to accept that individuals might be recorded differently by different NGOs, so long as they are univocally identified by each of them throughout time (Schoemaker et al. 2021, 18). Technically, these are short-term practices that should not be officially endorsed, but they can be justified as grounded in regulatory shortcomings that make it unclear who should identify individuals in “borderline” situations, what the applicable procedure is, and what is the legal basis for other organisations to trust the identity assigned by another organisation. In other words, there is currently no legal basis for humanitarian actors to take any identity assigned by other NGOs as definitive and trustworthy – hence, they often resolve to assign such people yet another transitional and “NGO-specific” identity. While concomitant non-duplication would be essential, multiple identities at different times, while definitely an additional hurdle in terms of e.g. transnational crime investigations, can prove life-saving against backdrops of persecution and refuge. It is often reported in scholarship that through universality and intimacy, governments endeavour to secure authenticity, while uniqueness is secured through obligations and performance. I will spend some more words on authenticity requirements, but uniqueness, too, is especially challenging in contexts of 10 These considerations are valid for refugees only, but might not be as applicable to or suitable for “non-borderline” situations. Quite the opposite is true: purpose-limited multiplicity of digital identities (which does not necessarily escalate, however, to the level of duplicated identities) might help foster users’ privacy by disrupting cycles of patterns extractions and data exhaustion. Refer e.g. to (Access Now 2020, 4).