An atom's worth of anonymity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a foundational approach to understanding anonymity by defining an atomic measure and exploring its logical properties, aiming to formalize the concept rather than security techniques.

Contribution

It axiomatizes a simple atomic notion of anonymity and investigates the first-order logic based on these atoms, providing a formal logical framework for anonymity.

Findings

Proposes an atomic model of anonymity

Develops axioms for the atomic anonymity measure

Explores first-order logic of anonymity

Abstract

Anonymity has gained notoriety in modern times as data about our actions and choices accumulates in the internet partly unbeknownst to us and partly by our own choice. Usually people wish some data about themselves were private while some other date may be public or is even wanted to be public for publicity reasons. There are different criteria which characterize the degree of anonymity of data. Given data can also be anonymized by different techniques in order to increase its degree of anonymity. In this paper we take a very simple "atomic" degree of anonymity as our starting place. We axiomatize these atoms and propose the investigation of first order logic based on these atoms. Considering the vast literature and the huge importance of anonymity our investigation may seem quite modest. However, it is about the logic of anonymity, not about how to secure, create or break anonymity.