The IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Extended Reality (XR) Report--Extended Reality (XR) and the Erosion of Anonymity and Privacy

This report is the result of work within the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethics of Extended Reality (XR), a multidiscipline group of industry practitioners, ethicists, academics, researchers, educators, and technology enthusiasts. It has been written to focus on a wide range of ethical issues related to XR and the erosion of anonymity and privacy. This report builds on work outlined in the “Extended Reality” chapter of the IEEE’s seminal ethics-focused publication, Ethically Aligned Design. XR is a term used to broadly refer to a suite of immersive technologies including virtual reality, augmented reality, and spatial computing. The scope of this report is the exploration of ethics-related issues in terms of anonymity and privacy of XR applications; the aim is to initiate expert-driven, multidiscipline analysis of the evolving XR Ethics requirements, with a vision to propose solutions, technologies, and standards in future updates. The set of recommendations within this report will hopefully contribute to industry conceptualization of socio-technological issues, highlight concreted recommendations, and lay the groundwork for future technical-standardization activities.