Biometric Technology at the Borders of Citizenship 327 is unserviceable for States of origin to reidentify (and keep persecuting) single individuals would deserve inspection on its own, as well as formalisation into appropriate technical standards for data sharing. One may further wonder what identity the UNHCR is supposed to collect (and expected to share) exactly. If that is refugees’ original identity, i.e. the one they were known in their country of origin by, then perhaps an introducer will be needed, who is proficient in both languages and can testify to their identity. Risks of corruption and fraud abound, as do the chances that undercover governmental agents, private security contractors, or cover smugglers propose themselves for the role. When, instead, refugees are (temporarily?) assigned a new identity, an introducer might still be of aid to “prove” family ties and, with them, verify claims of inheritance, property, forced displacement, war damages, parenthood, and the like. In this event, how to ensure that previous identities are fully erased? To exemplify, what if the “receiving” government comes into possession of pictures reporting the previous identity of the refugee, eventually linking the latter to their personal history and issuing restricting administrative decisions based thereupon? As open-source information (and indeed pictures) online is on the rise, the risk cannot be underestimated. And how to trust that such government is not going to misuse such information, e.g. in the context of regime collapse? These are all circumstances that rely on technology solutions to enhance trust and indeed provide “trustworthiness”, in compliance with technical standards that shall be designed to cater for the interests of the most vulnerable. For instance, right upon a coup d’état, one of the immediate measures adopted by the prevailing party is that of militarising and most often fencing and locking the country’s border,9 while the previous ruling élite is either arrested or sent into exile: how to ensure, then, that identity information is not used against the dethronised to target them and their supporters/voters domestically while preventing them from fleeing to and seeking refuge in neighboring countries? And even if they fled successfully, how would those neighboring countries behave data-wise in terms of formal and informal information sharing with the new rulers? Technology solutions should anticipate and possibly prevent all such problems. For instance, should identity onboarding data be exclusively accessible to certain institutions or to each ruling élite only until power is handed over to the next one and all data expired with it? A solution whereby population’s data is only accessible to a ruling party while the next one would need to 9 To exemplify, this is what happened most recently in Niger (France24 2023); given Niger’s centrality in Sub-Saharan migration patterns towards North Africa and eventually Mediterranean Europe (Financial Times 2023; Vecellio Segate 2015), this case is of broader significance here. On the deployment of biometrics technology for migration management purposes in Niger, see (Dauchy 2022).