Kristina Podnar: We must fight for our privacy and digital rights in XR

Hello Kristina, can you please introduce yourself to my readers? 

Kristina Podnar here, or as my friends like to call me, the Digital Policy Sherpa. For over two decades I’ve worked with some of the most high-profile organizations in the world, helping them see policies as opportunities to free the organization from uncertainty, risk, and internal chaos. More importantly, though, I try and make policies that serve the needs of those creating digital, ensuring that policies unlock opportunity, strengthen the brand, and liberate employees to drive innovation.

What is the XRSI safety week?

Privacy and safety are a bond that unites us and connects us to each other in this brave new XR world. The event is an annual celebration of promoting sound XR practices by regulators, entities, and individuals, but also an opportunity to highlight that we are not alone in building a stronger, safer metaverse, and in creating a safe, supportive environment for every citizen.

By coming together for this one week in December, we are better able to create a culture where everyone feels safe because their safety is built into Web 3.0 and the coming wave of XR capabilities. The more we stay connected and committed, the more we can show up fully to support one another. And the more we feel supported, the safer choices we demand as citizens, and make as regulators, entities, and developers. In the end, that translates into a better experience for everyone.

Your track is about “Privacy & Safety and Digital Human Rights“. Can you detail a bit more this topic?

Technology has created severe tension and incompatibility between the right to privacy and safety, and the extensive data pooling introduced by governments and giant corporations. Entities and even individuals have become hard-core data miners, collecting information about every aspect of our life, behavior, and activities. This trend picked up momentum from the Web 1.0 days and throughout Web 2.0.

On the 73^rd anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights, and with the dawn of Web 3.0, we are asking the community at large to join us in raising our voices and advocating for privacy and safety as part of every person’s right, our Digital Human Rights. 

This track will focus on bringing cross-industry and human rights experts together to discuss human rights in the context of XR and the new digital realities. We will begin answering the question of “How do we create a new digital paradigm that respects the privacy and safety of every citizen?”

Do you think there is still room for real privacy in a future when we will have cameras attached to our heads every moment of our life?

There is always room for privacy if we deliberately choose to make the room. Historically governments and businesses have moved fast and broken things using technology. Just because they haven’t historically acted in a way that respects citizens’ rights, doesn’t mean that such behavior has to continue. The great thing about humans is that we are capable of learning new behaviors. This is the time to introduce new behaviors and hold governments and corporations accountable to a higher standard of behavior and one that respects privacy.

How can we fight for our privacy rights in XR?

First, we need to recognize that the fight for privacy rights in XR is already under way, but we need to magnify it. Each person cannot simply be a passive consumer of privacy in XR. Rather, every person needs to act in a way that is appropriate for them. For some, it might mean joining a formal organization and lending their skills to define data safety schemas, for others it might be celebrating with us Safety Week and educating schoolchildren about privacy in XR, and yet for others, it might be embedding privacy controls in software and hardware that they are building for XR. The point is, we all have the skill to contribute, we all have a critical point of view, and nobody can nor should be passive.

If you don’t know how to get involved, Safety Week should be your first stop. You can also reach out to XRSI and other organizations that have been advocating (and getting traction) in this space for years. We’ve seen entities such as Australia’s eSafety Commissioner, who will be joining us at Safety Week, step up and help Australians have safer, more positive experiences online. We need more regulators to do the same, and corporations and individuals to join in the conversation, too.

What about digital human rights? What are the ones currently available? And which one should we aim at obtaining?

Let’s be clear first, by understanding that human rights apply in the digital sphere just as they do in the analog world. The rights to privacy and safety have been around as long as the Declaration on Human rights (73 years), but when digital was introduced, we seemed to have forgotten about those rights because nobody was enforcing them in the digital realm. Digital technologies have simply allowed new ways for those rights to be violated. Digital can also provide new means to exercise those rights.

The United Nations, along with an increasing number of regulators, have stated that data protection and privacy issues, digital identity, the use of surveillance technologies, online violence, and harassment, are of particular concern in the digital realm, including XR. We want to see more regulators, big tech, entities, and individuals (whether designers, developers, or other roles) recognize these violations of rights and build technology in a responsible way that prevents the trampling of human rights and provides for remediation when those rights are violated. If you walked up to me now and punched me while I am standing in my home, there would be consequences to your actions (least of which would be trespassing in my personal space). Why should the same not be true in XR?

Do you think that NPCs should have rights too? I mean, what should happen if I harassed an NPC?

NPCs are algorithms with no minds and no feelings, but one of the topics we are asking during Safety Week (and requires a much deeper and longer conversation) is whether it is possible to have algorithmic suffering. Do we, as humans, have some degree of ethical responsibility toward NPCs?

Practically speaking as a policy person, I think it will be hard to give human rights to NPCs, just because regulators around the world will likely take different stances on the topic. So already having NPCs under different laws around the world creates a non-sustainable model for enforcement of rights – it would take years for enforcement in many countries and the company or individual (or even NPC) may not be around at that point.

Instead, I think we should consider the risks that come with NPCs (as well as the opportunities) and create policies right from the start. These safeguards could help us by evolving over time as we answer the question about NPCs having human rights and ought an individual or entity face consequences of harassing an NPC. I believe that there should and that there will be consequences. I just think it will take time for us to get there and that is why we need those policies, or safeguards, upfront. Let’s not break things just because we are moving fast and not considering the consequences or long-term implications.

Talking about safety, how to find the right compromise between freedom and anonimity in the metaverse and safety of its users? The two things are incompatible with each other…

I’ve had this debate a lot over the past year. Fundamentally, we must have some governing mechanisms in place, just as we do with local safety entities today. For example, I enjoy walking on the street with a great deal of anonymity. But if I choose to hit or attack another person, thus committing a crime, I will quickly lose the veil of anonymity and face consequences for my actions. The same concept must translate into the metaverse, but the complexity is on a far grander scale, given the space and circumstances in which a person can present themselves. So there needs to be anonymity and freedom, with identification capabilities by delegated entities that have checks and balances in place. What does that look like? I don’t know yet, which is why it is important to have these discussions and Safety Week is only one week during the year; we need to talk about these issues for the other 51 weeks.

Anything else to add to this interview?

I think we need to underline the need to be deliberate and thoughtful about the safeguards we are building into the metaverse and emerging technologies. And we need to understand that we need to act before it is too late. There are many entities with special interests who don’t wish to have safeguards in the XR space because it means less money, less prestige, less power. But if every citizen did nothing more than become educated and aware, and asked one person in their family or circle of friends to do the same, we would already make great headway. Imagine what else we could do if everyone took an action (single action) to further citizen interests in the coming digital wave!