D11.1: Collection of Topics and Clusters of Mobility and Identity – Towards a Taxonomy of Mobility and Identity

Title: ANONYMITY AND DE-IDENTIFICATION IN MOBILE NETWORKS AND MOBILE IDENTITY MANAGEMENT

Anonymity and De-Identification in Mobile Networks and Mobile Identity Management

This section studies how mobile identities could be managed in mobile ad hoc networks, which are networks constituted by small devices (e.g. mobile phones), where these networks offer a high degree of mobility. In this section, mobile ad-hoc networks have been chosen to provide an example case of a particular type of mobile network, as mobile ad hoc networks, to a large degree, embody the challenges and issues regarding privacy that are present in mobile networks in general. Moreover, the key concepts discussed in this document, mobility and identity, are of paramount importance in mobile ad hoc networks, as will be discussed below. Regarding mobility, by definition, mobile ad hoc networks are expected to offer high degrees of mobility, even without the aid of central infrastructures and services. Regarding identity, it is discussed in this section that the inherent properties of (true) mobile ad hoc networks make it possible for the participants in such networks to be anonymous by destroying their own identities, for example by constantly changing their IP and MAC addresses. It is in theory possible to reduce the mobile idem identity in mobile networks into the empty set – thus, enabling anonymous communication due to the lack of persistent identifiers in the network. However, we argue that such behaviour is harmful for the network sanity (i.e. the network is behaving in an expected manner), and that more advanced functions for managing mobile identities in mobile ad hoc networks are needed, and furthermore, that such solutions for uniquely identifying participants actually can be used as a foundation upon which it is possible to develop anonymity technologies. We label the fact that in order to provide practical anonymity one must posses a unique identifier as the identity vs. anonymity paradox in mobile ad hoc networks.

Section introduces mobile ad hoc networks, and further discusses the problem of uniquely identifying participants in such networks. Section discusses various security models for mobile ad hoc networks that could be used to enable persistent identifiers and mobile identity management in such networks. Section introduces a number of strategies for enabling anonymity in mobile ad hoc networks by implementing anonymity technologies on top of security models allowing the usage of persistent identifiers.