Open and Emergent Problems in Agentic Privacy and Security: A Contextual Angle
Sahar Abdelnabi
Borja de Balle Pigem
Sebastian Benthall
Eleanor Birrell
Kamalika Chaudhuri
Madiha Zahrah Choksi
Rachel Cummings
Adam Davies
Dj Dvijotham
Seliem El-Sayed
Ferdinando Fioretto
Matt Franchi
Adria Gascon
Roxana Geambasu
Sahra Ghalebikesabi
Hamed Haddadi
Jamie Hayes
Ashish Hooda
Amir Houmansadr
Somesh Jha
Chloé Kiddon
Tadayoshi Kohno
Abdullatif Köksal
Haoran Li
Tianshi Li
Nathan Malkin
Sarah Meiklejohn
Niloofar Mireshghallah
Sewoong Oh
Katherine Ortiz
Ivan Petrov
Francesco Pinto
Franziska Roesner
Edo Roth
Jacqueline Rowe
Khawaja Shams
Ilia Shumailov
Yan Shvartzshnaider
Dawn Song
Jose Such
Octavian Suciu
Pierre Tholoniat
Trishita Tiwari
Hal Triedman
Ren Yi
Wen Zhang
Xuhui Zhou
Kassem Fawaz
Stefan Mellem
Helen Nissenbaum
Marco Gruteser
Google (2026)
Abstract
The vision of an ecosystem of general and highly capable autonomous agents challenges
accepted principles of secure and privacy-preserving system engineering. Inspired by the
theory of Contextual Integrity, we argue that in order for agents to act appropriately, their
behaviors should comply with societal norms and expectations. This manuscript explores
contextual approaches to engineering agentic systems that embody an understanding of
societal norms and uphold the appropriateness of actions by design. It presents a list of
key open research problems in this area to create awareness among the broader research
community across academia, government, and industry.
accepted principles of secure and privacy-preserving system engineering. Inspired by the
theory of Contextual Integrity, we argue that in order for agents to act appropriately, their
behaviors should comply with societal norms and expectations. This manuscript explores
contextual approaches to engineering agentic systems that embody an understanding of
societal norms and uphold the appropriateness of actions by design. It presents a list of
key open research problems in this area to create awareness among the broader research
community across academia, government, and industry.
Research Areas
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