Here is a couple of follow-up ideas for the whole “local from structure” thingy.
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When structure is up, local will show only those who wants to be seen. First of all, it would be your allies and those with enough positive standing (the usual practice will be for those to set up in settings that they want to be displayed in friendly locals). Others remain mystery unless they are on grid with you (so you don’t know what corp/ally they belong and who they are), but you may see them factored in a counter of max ppl in the system (until structure is up and running). But keep in mind that cloackers are not immune anymore and can be hunt down and probed with enough persistence! Non-cloackers can be scanned as usual, so if you are ready to fight to get rid of them - you are always welcome.
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Anybody, even your corpmate or ally, can deliberately “step into shadow”, disappearing from all locals
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Different kinds of cloacking vessels may employ their advanced espionage capabilities to hack into those communication structures instead of simply bashing them, thus gaining access to data on who is online in some remote systems, how much people are registered with it etc - at a cost of making themselves even more susceptible to counter-espionage tools. In particular, the longer they stay connected and the more mistakes they do while trying to break through security, the higher is the chance they’ll get traced back (without even knowing it) and owner of the infrastructure will get a dynamic warp link allowing him within certain time window to warp directly upon that vessel - even if it moves from spot to spot and stays cloacked. It also has high chance to disclose personal details of perpetrator (alliance/corp/name) even without actually catching him. The owner also has an option to shut down a compromised structure remotely, preventing further leaks, though it will send a clear signal to a hacker that he is caught.
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It could be also allowed for such vessels to remotely hack into computer systems of stations and citadels, at even higher chance of being disclosed and caught (with corp/ally members getting additional bonuses to hacking skills and abilities to stay anonymous while at it, as they are insiders and more aware of surroundings), getting access to data that should stay unknown to most members, like balance of corp wallets and contents of secret corp hangars etc. For each successful hacking attempt a “data item” is created (thus presence of such items in some person’s belonging may sometimes identify him as a possible spy). After a lot of such items are gathered, an analysis can be made on them, providing a random piece of intel (for example, contents of some hangar at a random citadel, or what production jobs are currently set there). All those “data items” have expiration date and must be gathered in short succession. In addition, each successive hacking attempt becomes known to alliance/corp leaders, so they may try to disclose identity of the spy (that’s somebody who disappears from locals too often, have been seen flying a covops ship when he shouldn’t have had, was seen in the systems where hacking attempts did happen etc)
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Even when you are on one grid with somebody who decided to not be displayed in local (be it “friend” or foe), you won’t get any data regarding their identity. The only way to get this data is to spool up a special new mode of dscan, which takes some time to complete (1-3 minutes), and can’t be used if you are already targeted and are fired upon (i.e., if any kind of PvP timer is started for you). If you happen to have a cloacked friend nearby, he can do it, though, thus identifying assailant (depending on type of assailant’s vessel, it may take more than one run of this module; the smaller the ship - the more it takes (delivering a bit more data with each run, like his alliance first, then corp, then his name), even more so if ship is a covops-cloacked espionage vessel).
Additional mechanics could be added which allows you to investigate place where attack did occur and gather some clues which may give some hints on identity of perpetrator. The faster you’ll arrive at the spot, the more traces will be left there by assailants (like wreck of the victim and some of their own wrecks etc), the bigger their group was, the longer they stayed in the grid while killing the dude - the higher the chance to uncover their identities, or at least to which corp/alliance they belonged. Thus the system goes easier on a stealthy, small, highly proficient and mobile commando teams allowing them to stay under radar, while allows easily get a data on identity of huge blobs of non-cloacked ships - even after they left the grid where gank did happen (though somebody still needs to be sent there fast enough to run “investigation module” or all traces will vanish pretty soon).
If neither of those methods did work for you, you don’t have any straightforward way to know who attacked the dude now, unless the assailants decide to brag about it and will publish their killmail - yours won’t contain their identities either.
Thus age of wide-scale espionage and sabotage begins. Even if you are not a master of diplomacy and social engineering, there is still a niche for you - to be a regular low-rank hitman, shooting your allies in the hind from the shadows. Or hack into their comms behind the front lines, sharing data with your masters. Haven’t you dreamed about something like this for all your life? We all did.