Biometric Technology at the Borders of Citizenship 329 refuge, while being too often disregarded in biometrics literature. Scholars generally posit that ‘[o]rganisations’ desire for uniqueness is driven by concerns of identity fraud, where individuals might attempt to enrol multiple times, potentially using multiple personas, to gain extra benefits’ (Rahaman and Sasse 2012, 42), and while this is indeed a concern, the other side of the issue is virtually always neglected. I am referring to contexts whereby it is convenient for governmental, para-governmental, or even non-governmental organisations to have multiple personas registered under the same denomination. This reads counterintuitive, but an example should hopefully clarify the matter. Suppose you are a refugee, fleeing from political persecution; suppose, further, that customary traditions in your rural village demand denominations (what one understands as “name and surname”) be inherited vertically across generations with little to no variation, in order to remark one’s belonging and tribal affiliation. Conjecture, then, that this tribe-based denomination makes it easier for your persecutors to target your extended family members not only in practice but also de iure (e.g. by reducing pro capita welfare benefits to a few members only, based on homonymy, or worse even, celebrating trials under summary justice proceedings, or pretending to “mistake” one member for another). In all such contexts, onboarding should be designed in such a way as to secure not only that one individual registers multiple accounts, but also that several identities do not get conflated under the same definition because of (genuine or fabricated) instances of tribal co-denomination. This helps ensure that a remaining family member is not targeted in lieu of a similarly named family member who escaped (or tried to) the relevant jurisdiction to petition as a refugee abroad. Either way, transitionally, potential contacts of the refugee in the destination country can prove of assistance for trusted recognition – of the refugee’s previous identity if they keep it, or of e.g. family ties if they wanted to embrace a new one (think of all those – especially women – who change their surname when establishing themselves in a new country). Provided that their ties with the destination country are lasting and “clean” enough, a selection of these potential contacts could serve as introducers, but they might not agree on being remotely identified: some of them might prefer to be identified by authorities on-spot, in-person, through traditional paper documentation, without releasing their records to a newly conceived centralised system – especially if AI-powered. State authorities, along with the system’s designer, shall make sure that introducer identification never becomes a disincentive for destination-country contacts to come forward and help whenever they can, also thanks to their ties to local groups from relevant diasporas. The erasure of refugees’ previous identity raises a host of issues in its own right. To begin with, how could they claim back their financial assets deposited within traditional bank circuits under the previous identity? Are state laws flexible enough to accommodate a combination of biometric authentications as opposed to ID-based