We are proud to share the presentation recording from Talk #4 of our ENSURE-6G Event 8: Workshop on AI for 6G Security, hosted at the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ), Sri Lanka.
In this session, Dr. Galit Wellner, Assistant Professor at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT) and Adjunct Professor at Tel Aviv University, presents a vital socio-technical perspective titled “Ethical Aspects of Privacy in 6G”.
About the Speaker & Ethical Frameworks
Dr. Galit Wellner is a philosopher of technology, an active member of the postphenomenology community, and serves as an academic advisor to the AI Regulations Forum of the Israeli Ministry of Innovation, Science, and Technology. As a Principal Investigator for the ENSURE-6G project, her diverse background spans computer programming, intellectual property law, and high-tech corporate marketing.
Key Takeaways from the Talk
- Expanding Beyond the FATE Framework: While the standard FATE framework (Fairness, Accountability, Transparency, and Explainability) is widely used in computer science, Dr. Wellner argues it is ethically limited. To truly secure the future of 6G, we must expand our ethical analysis to explicitly protect human autonomy, well-being, safety, and the endurance of democratic societies.
- Moving Beyond Legal Consent and Encryption: Standard privacy strategies rely on legal barriers (like the GDPR’s cookie tracking consent) and engineering defenses (like encryption to prevent unauthorized access). However, these frameworks operate on the flawed assumption that privacy violations only occur during a technical failure or a security breach. In highly integrated AI networks like 6G, surveillance is a system feature, not a bug.
- The Systemic Privacy Challenges of 6G: With the introduction of continuous micro-localization, edge AI inference, and cross-platform data integration, non-participation or “opting out” becomes practically impossible without rendering the network entirely non-functional.
- Applying Solove’s Taxonomy to 6G Networks: Dr. Wellner maps the ethical risks of 6G across Daniel Solove’s famous four-stage privacy taxonomy:
- Collection: The push for extreme user personalization creates a feedback loop where massive, continuous tracking is framed as essential for user convenience.
- Processing: Raw data feeds massive data lakes, resulting in algorithmic profiling. While data frameworks require companies to share raw data with individuals, they do not disclose algorithmic labeling results. Users are profiled, sorted, and categorized by hidden algorithms without recourse to correction.
- Distribution: Ultra-low latency requirements cause data to rapidly leap between clouds, edge operators, and third-party systems within milliseconds, completely dissolving original contextual boundaries.
- Invasion: The network shifts from a passive telecommunications platform to an active, predictive agent capable of intervening in real life.
- The Democratic and Autonomy Threat: An integrated data lake combined with predictive AI poses a severe risk to democratic processes. For example, if a network possesses predictive knowledge of a citizen’s political stances and movement, it could manipulate local messaging or location updates to subtly nudge behavior or suppress civic engagement.
- A Call for Architectural Responsibility: We cannot rely solely on basic security and legal click-wrap consent forms to safeguard the future. Engineers and architects must build explicit ethical constraints directly into the 6G architectural design layer to actively protect human well-being, democracy, and individual autonomy.
Watch the full presentation video below:
