Identity is a function of the country that issues it. The passport, the tax number, the residence permit, the identity card: each is anchored to a jurisdiction, and the jurisdiction sets the terms on which the identity is consulted by everyone else. A person who would prefer to be reached without the friction of one country's rules has a different relationship to the world than a person whose papers route them through another.

The conditions in which this matters are wider than they used to be. Banks, brokers, exchanges, and increasingly ordinary commercial parties consult the jurisdiction of an identity at every interaction. The verification that follows is not the same in every case. The questions that are asked, the documents that are required, and the ongoing obligations that attach to the relationship are calibrated, in part, to where the person is on paper.

Movement in this area is constant. Countries adjust their position on cross-border tax cooperation, on identity verification, on disclosure of holdings, and on the obligations of their residents to declare what is held elsewhere. The adjustments do not, individually, make the news. They register as small changes to what the principal is asked when they next interact with a financial institution, an aggregator, or a verification service. The aggregate effect, over a decade, is substantial.

The work of identity protection is, in part, the work of understanding where a client's identity sits and what flows from that. Some clients hold a single identity in a single country; many serious clients hold identities in two or three. The relationships between them are visible to anyone who knows to ask. The desk maintains a current account of where each identity stands and how it is being treated in the present environment.

What follows is a deliberate position. Identity, properly understood, is something a person holds in a particular shape and maintains in that shape over time. It is not something that drifts because the country has decided that something else is now required.