Is Your AI Agent Spying on You? What future for privacy, security and user agency in the agentic AI era

  • Workshop
  • Le Baixu
  • Thursday 21.05 — 11:50 - 13:05

Organising Institution

Mozilla

United States

Agentic AI systems are evolving from passive assistants into autonomous actors that operate across applications, services, and devices on users’ behalf. To function, they often require persistent access to personal data, communications, credentials, and system environments. This challenges privacy and security models built around user-initiated actions and limited data flows, raising questions about encryption, data minimisation, delegated authority and accountability. This workshop will examine how privacy, security, and agency can remain central in the agentic AI era. Rather than adopting an alarmist framing, it will focus on responsible innovation: clarifying how agentic systems alter traditional assumptions and identifying mechanisms to strengthen user control, including scoped permissions, revocable delegation, strong authentication, and oversight. Drawing on lessons from encrypted communications and browser security models, the session will explore how core privacy and security principles can be operationalised in agent architectures, placing user control at the centre of AI agent design and deployment.

Host

Udbhav Tiwari

Signal - United States

Udbhav Tiwari is the Vice President for Strategy and Global Affairs at Signal. Udbhav’s experience in the technology sector spans both global and regional contexts, where he was formerly the Director for Global Product Policy at Mozilla, with prior roles at Google and the Centre for Internet and Society in India. He has testified before the U.S Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and been quoted as an expert by CNN, The Guardian, Wired, Financial Times, BBC, and Reuters. Udbhav was previously affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and was named to India Today’s “India Tomorrow” list in 2020.

Host

Elizabeth Renieris

Institute for Ethics in AI - University of Oxford - International

A globally recognized privacy expert, researcher, and author, Elizabeth Renieris has spent her career at the intersection of human rights and emerging technology, long before it was a headline. Founder and CEO of HACKYLAWYER, a senior research associate at Oxford's Institute for Ethics in AI, and inaugural expert-in-residence at the London AI Hub, Elizabeth has advised the World Bank, U.S. Congress, U.K. Parliament, and European Commission on AI, digital identity, and data governance. She's also the author of Beyond Data: Reclaiming Human Rights at the Dawn of the Metaverse (MIT Press). Elizabeth is also a Lead Privacy Counsel at Mozilla. Her work has appeared in Wired, The New York Times, Forbes, and NPR, and she was named one of the "Brilliant Women in AI Ethics" by Women in AI Ethics in 2022.

Host

Julia Smakman

Ada Lovelace Institute - International

Julia Smakman is a Senior Researcher in the Law & Policy research domain at the Ada Lovelace Institute. They joined Ada as a Researcher in October 2023. Julia’s research focuses on the effective regulation of AI systems, including foundation models in the UK and the EU. Julia is interested in the intersection of technology and human rights, and the fair use of algorithms, AI, and (biometric) data in policing and other public functions. They have a legal background and has completed an LLM in Constitutional and Administrative Law at the University of Amsterdam and an LLM at LSE, focusing on Human Rights and Law & Technology. Julia previously worked for Lawyers for Lawyers, leading a research project on the impact of surveillance technologies on lawyer-client confidentiality.