Shava Nerad on the Military/Institutional Angle

Government interest in anonymity springs originally from law enforcement/security/military applications. You touch on some of this, but other important uses are concealing the location of military personnel and field agents communicating online from risk areas; undercover agents and spies; concealing the location of critical military *server* resources (a use for Tor's "hidden services" facilities).

This last use is a dimension of anonymity I don't know if you are addressing, but you might want to. Many groups have an interest in shielding the location of a server. For example, command and control for military operations, or a bank server reporting a security breach to an online security repository.

Your emphasis, because you are relating to identity management frameworks, seems to be more on the individual rather than institutional/server/network topology uses. Is that a restriction you want to maintain, or do you want to examine all uses of anonymity?

With data retention (which could be a second focus, or a whole *new* project proposal) the institutional uses of anonymity are going to become a significant focus of law, regulation and practice.