USING eID PSEUDONYMITY AND ANONYMITY FOR STRENGTHENING USER FREEDOM IN INTERNET

Abstract

When the Internet was designed in early 70s it main goal was to establish communication between two parties. Few decades later a saying “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” was coined, representing the fundamental user right - freedom of choosing his identity in the Internet. The recent rapid growth of electronic and mobile services over Internet required strong user authentication mechanisms, where user identity was derived from his personal and biometric data. For some contemporary Internet applications this strong authentication is not desirable in society since it reduces the user freedom to express his opinion without a fear for unjust negative consequences. This paper presents an efficient solution using national biometric identity cards (eID) for conducting anonymous transactions over Internet, where by user identity is substituted by his pseudonym stored in eID biometric contact less card. The testing environment consists of two applications: (i) commenting the article in e-News, and (ii) casting a vote in a electronic election system. Paper concludes with the list strengthens and limitations of proposed solution.