D2.2: Set of use cases and scenarios

Title: INTRODUCTION

Introduction

Many concepts evolve around the one of identity: identification, anonymity, pseudonymity, (un)observability, (un)tracability.

The aim of this chapter is to present a unifying model for identities in the Information Society. This model is driven by typical applications: identification, authentication and authorization schemes. 

As a model it is not supposed to be definitive or universal; however, it fits very well with the current diversity of these schemes and we hope it to be broad enough to evolve and adapt itself when new schemes appear. 

Our goal is not to cover all aspects of identity, this would be too ambitious. But we will present a set of unifying concepts and then use them to better understand and solve practical scenarios.  

We will provide new definitions for these unifying concepts and we will illustrate these definitions with typical examples. For example, in our approach, pseudonyms are reduced to a special case of identity. 

In this model, we attempt to define “identity” in the Information Society. Here, the identity clearly does not refer to the entire person anymore, but only to part of it. We should remember that, etymologically speaking, “person” comes from the Latin word “personae” which is derived from the Greek word “prosoopon” which means “mask”. In a way, we will refer to the mask instead of the whole person itself. This approach will lead to a new core concept: the virtual persons. 

In doing so, we do not cover existential questions like the ones related to the soul for example. We consciously restrict our view to the Information Society. The existence of a soul, feelings, etc. for people, animals or even programs is beyond the scope of this article.

The same set of concepts is used to modelize the identity of a human being or the identity of a legal entity.