D3.8: Study on protocols with respect to identity and identification – an insight on network protocols and privacy-aware communication

Title: PROTOCOLS FOR PRIVACY-AWARE COMMUNICATION

In the previous chapter, commonly used protocols for networking were analysed regarding their privacy properties. This chapter deals with privacy-aware communication and gives an overview of techniques and developments in three different areas: 

1. Anonymisation services; 

2. User-centric identity management; 

3. Privacy policies and their enforcement. 

The systems and properties described are not in all cases regarded as “protocols”, but on the one hand the definition given in Chapter (Wikipedia: Protocol (computing) 2007) covers the depicted techniques, and on the other hand they are important to understand current developments in the privacy area to cope with some of the privacy threats the use of protocols and ICT systems in general poses.

The three areas elaborated in this chapter are not orthogonal. Depending on the definition, “identity management” can be regarded as superordinate to the other two terms. However, in Section 3.2 a focus is put on credentials and standards for federated identity management rather than also comprising anonymity or policy features. 

In principle the protocol layers introduced in Section 2.1.1 also apply for this chapter, but in current implementations the techniques for privacy-aware communication are realised in higher layers in the protocol stack (i.e., on the application layer) because it is assumed that today’s existing infrastructure is being used and cannot easily be exchanged by privacy-enhancing developments also on the lower protocol layers.