Digi Rights: Applying fundamental Human Rights to the Digital Realm

I found the transcript of the presentation below via Pearl Harbor to 9-11 to the Panopticon, which describes how traumatic events, together with high-tech social media and ad-tech can lead to a surveillance state (and has some good links to other articles). It mentions this presentation:

What Happens Next Will Amaze You

The presentation ends with an explanation of 6 ‘Fixes’ that should help protect us, that are relevant to this topic:

  1. Right To Download
  2. Right To Delete
  3. Limits on Behavioral Data Collection
  4. Right to Go Offline
  5. Ban on Third-Party Advertising
  6. Privacy Promises

This declaration is interesting, asking for participation at the municipality level:

Cities for Digital Rights Declaration

cities for digital rights

The same Human Rights that people have offline must also be protected online. We ask our city councils to join the coalition for digital rights and protect my rights.

  1. Universal and equal access to the internet, and digital literacy

  2. Privacy, data protection and security

  3. Transparency, accountability, and non-discrimination of data, content and algorithms

  4. Participatory Democracy, diversity and inclusion

  5. Open and ethical digital service standards

This is a continuation of the Human Rights discussion in this topic:

Probably most uses are implicit references to the concept we share about what ‘human rights’ mean, rather than explicit references to the declaration, but it depends on context. At least in Digi Rights: Applying fundamental Human Rights to the Digital Realm the declaration is explicitly the target of the discussion.

Sure. It must be applied to have any meaning. And it has been applied on countless occasions. It has also been violated numerous times, as we all know, and continues to be violated by people and parties all around the world.

I wonder why you have written the response like this. Are you implying that it is a useless exercise to have the declaration? Or that there is another, better way to ensure human rights are universally known. A way that makes application and adherence easier to enforce?

@Free and @Naro, maybe you would be interested to provide more input to the ideas outlined in this thread, and maybe even participate in giving them hands and feet?

Though @Free’s comment is a bit of an over-generalization IMHO, I agree with @Free that Human Rights are giving insufficient handholds for how to behave in the digital realm.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights may have sufficient coverage in its Articles to not require new ones, but an amendment / clarification in the form of an additional document may be in order.

Now, I know it sounds like an overwhelming task for our small community to take on this work, but there are interesting steps we can take to raise awareness to the issue (and secondarily attract much attention to Humane Tech and the community itself):

  • We can create a website displaying the ‘Declaration of Human Digital Rights’ (or similar title)

    • The draft text is crowdsourced, versioned and continuously improved in the public domain
    • The text resides in a Github repository as a simple Markdown document
    • The website is a sub-domain of the community website, e.g. declaration.humanetech.community
  • The site allows people and organizations to sign (the latest version of) the declaration

    • Signatories provide full name, email (private, for validation only), and optional occupation + profile link
    • The list of signatories is public and can be navigated
    • Optionally people can leave a remark, and we show a curated list of the most interesting ones
    • Organizations are encourage to leave an official position statement, which we’ll use in promotion
  • We create an Awareness Campaign Theme and campaigns for the promotion of the declaration text

    • We’ll use our social media channels in a continuous manner to attract attention
    • We’ll approach and involve human rights experts, respectable sources and influencers directly
    • We’ll write, publish, promote blog posts and articles on the subject matter and report on news in the field
    • Any Campaigner and member can join the effort, initiate own campaigns and create deliverables
  • When prior activities gain traction we’ll start running Advocacy projects, organize public / political pressure

    • We could start creating a global petition to adopt the declaration officially (maybe using avaaz.org)
    • We’ll involve the CHT core team who have direct connections to many world leaders and big tech board levels

WDYT?

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Regarding @aschrijver’s Declaration of rights idea, yes good idea! The Declaration could be about better enforcing rights through new laws, but stating it as a Declaration is effective from a marketing perspective. In addition there could be follow-ups to get people involved as activists.

According to the New Zealand Human Rights Commission’s Privacy, Data and Technology: Human Rights Challenges in the Digital Age, published in May 2018:

“the UN General Assembly and UN Human Rights Council resolutions on the right to privacy in the digital age has called for Governments [sic] to:”

  • “Develop or maintain legislation, preventive measures and remedies addressing harm from the sale or multiple resale or other corporate sharing of personal data without the individual’s free, explicit and informed consent.”

  • “Inform users of the collection, use, sharing and retention of data about them.”

This is according to the 19 December 2016 UN General Assembly Resolution on the Right to Privacy in the Digital Age, A/RES/71/199, Resolution 34/7.

Given the UN Resolution and that the UN Human Rights charter of 1948 already mentions privacy, I would say no we do not need to officially amend the charter to account for tech.

However perhaps we could ensure governments are actually making progress to enacting this UN Resolution by creating new human rights laws. I think right now there are few new laws that have arisen out of the UN Resolution. As we have seen, laws such as the European Union’s GDPR and California’s initiatives do not seem to be in the right spirit for actually fixing the largest privacy issues.

The Resolution is open to broad interpretation especially “individual’s free, explicit and informed consent”. Any reasonable person would say that what is going on now is not informed consent. Clicking on a button that says “continue” or “agree and continue” which strips you of all human privacy rights in my opinion is not informed consent, especially when there are no other options given. This is where GDPR fails.

What I would suggest that we need is a law where ANY use of non-anonymised personal information by a company must be explicit (yes / no), with the no option being as at least as easy to select as the yes option, and no always as the default option. This should be for each type of information before it is collected. Selecting no should not affect a person’s ability to use the service at all. For example:

“Can we store your name, email, IP address, geolocation, and page history?”

  • name yes / NO
  • email yes / NO
  • IP address yes / NO
  • geolocation yes / NO
  • page history yes / NO

“Can we share this information with our affiliated companies?”

  • yes / NO

“Can we share this information with third parties?”

  • yes / NO

In order to allow companies to continue making revenues at least 90% of what they made before, we could allow them to collect anonymised information (based on anonymous random ids such as cookies – but device and app ids, browser fingerprints or IP addresses should not be permitted as these are ‘identifiable’) about users and their behaviour without any prior consent at all (easier than GDPR or stupid EU Cookie Law), only under the conditions that information is kept temporarily (say no more than 90 days), never transferred or sold to third parties, and that anonymised information can never ever be combined with any identifiable information.

In addition, companies should be required to ask us say every year or so if we would like them to still keep identifiable personal information about us.
“We’re currently have all of the following information about you: x, x, x… Please reply yes within 180 days for each of these, otherwise they will each be deleted in accordance with criminal law. If we fail to delete information about you after this time we agree that we will be sent to prison as felons.”

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Wow, wonderful information @Free, thank you! That New Zealand PDF is a beauty!

I agree. There is enough in the original charter to cover human rights universally. There just needs to be interpretation of these for the digital world to discover - as you say - “the right spirit”, the unclarities and hiatuses to applying them in this realm.

Privacy is the most important aspect where we need fixes, but it is not the only one, as the other aspects mentioned in this thread show.

Regarding “creating law”, I think that may be an overreach of our community abilities, but we can do the crowdsourcing of the important focus points (the topics that must be addressed in law) and facilitate fertile discussions and cooperations among lawmakers, experts, lobbyists and influencers that can make them reality. After that they then follow-up in their their own government bodies, committees, foundations and what-have-you. So we act only as the ‘data-input and communication medium’ - the pollinator if you will.

All of that can happen on top of the project I outlined above - once that is started. And I agree that it will function mostly an effective marketing tool. A lure for the right people to get involved.

The examples you give regarding data collection are just one of many law improvements that are sorely needed. Great examples, BTW. We could create and collect these as a kind of crowdsourced recipes of how we think things should work, and have them be the triggers of the relevant discussions and follow-up.

I can facilitate this idea further, by creating a Github project for it, and creating Theme and Campaign proposal issues in our Awareness Program. Also I could create an Advocacy team within this forum, similar to Campaigners team (which has 26 members currently).

But this would only be useful if there are other members who want to help pushing this forward. As communiity facilitator my main priorities are in community building (i.e. the Aware Prepare and Eventful campaigns).


So, if you are interested to become an ‘Digital Human Rights Declaration’ activist, please give a shout on this thread :slight_smile:

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There are a lot of very interesting organizations to connect to, in the realm of Digital Rights. As part of the project we should build a comprehensive, curated list of these.

For instance, via Twitter I just reached out to the Digital Freedom Fund (who are active in Europe) and added a number of others to following (PS. the DFF has a nice blog on this subject).

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Good idea to reach out with the Digital Freedom Fund.

I was thinking of a few options to “create laws”:

  1. Find a country that would we willing to do it, small enough where they are willing to try new things but not so small that companies will simply block all users from their country. The country could then also earn revenue by collecting privacy violation fines from companies all over the world as law applies to user location.

  2. Have the tech industry themselves push to change the law (or simply make life difficult - stop connecting with - any companies that don’t go along with new privacy standards). Many tech companies are not in the attention economy, so they would stand to gain to have the privacy issues fixed and this would also help to clear out some unethical competitors. This could start like this: citizens’ campaign + small / medium business support => large business support => mega business support. It could snowball with the help of “techlash”. Many companies could want to get “on the right side” of the privacy issue to help secure their own future if facing a paradigm shift in privacy expectations.

Thanks @aschrijver. So glad you are enjoying the podcast!

Sorry for the delay. I have been nose down with getting my latest book, Digital Self Mastery Across Generations, (the updated print version) ready for CES. I will be signing and interviewed at Gary’s Book club at CES 2019 in January. The reason I mention this, is that it will be a great opportunity to share future plans for a Digital Wellbeing and Ethics Manifesto.

I would love to work together to create a manifesto. The CES stage will be a great platform to share even seed the idea of a manifesto and to get people involved.

If still interested, please shoot me an email directly at heidi@forbesoste.com (somehow when deep into other work, notifications from this forum got lost or went into spam).

The no default option would be very important for human rights- this is due to the marginalized population that are independent but vulnerable- like elderly or mentally ill, or developmentally delayed, English learners (in the USA), chronically ill- the list goes on for people who are responsible for themselves but may not understand. People in these groups try to get by day to day and may not have the bandwidth or cognitive ability to respond in a way to keep themselves protected.

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This is called opt-in (as opposed to opt-out which is now ofthe the standard on social media platforms). The GDPR, among others, prescribes that privacy-sensitive settings should be opt-in, and the user must explicitly choose to allow the setting.


@Free, I mentioned Estonia in reaction to @micheleminno’s idea for users being in control of their own data. Estonia is very open to adopting law in support of their move to an all-digital government, and they may be a very good study case.

Regarding point 2) we already see this playing out all over the internet, with growing awareness of privacy, privacy becoming a USP for a company (think e.g. Apple), and government willingness to get stricter privacy regulations and laws in place. But a good digital (human) rights foundation would be a great means of giving direction to the effort.

Are you in on the human rights project, @Free?


Hi @ForbesOste, these are really interesting subject matter for our community. Don’t hesitate to post to the forum, or ask for help. Also, although we just started building them, we can promote things via our social media channels.

Do you see the Manifesto as in line with the topic of this thread, i.e. a Digital Human Rights Declaration project? Or as a separate initiative (that can be started from the new Ethics category). Note that I also have the idea (not posted yet) to have an AI Ethics Manifesto for Journalism project, based on an excellent article by @Ellen_sch.

Also in my awesome-humane-tech list, in the Ethics section, there are a number of existing Manifestos related to technology use.

If you think this is a separate subject, then we’ll create a new topic for the discussion.

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However all that seems to mean is that users are given the option of either using a service, or not being allowed to use it at all. One crucial missing part from GDPR is that the NO option should be at least as easy as the yes option. Right now no looks like: click tiny text, read a full page of text, click small text, read and click through a few more pages, and then finally find out that once you choose “no” you are barred from using the service. While GDPR works great in many cases, in this typical use case of web / app / major internet company all that’s happened is that the user is being annoyed by GDPR and with purchases I’m sure the costs of complying with GDPR are being passed down to users, not to mention that all this ugly legalese is using up EU citizens’ valuable time.

With current EU law, the best choice for users is to press “accept” as fast as possible, because they know that if they don’t they will end up wasting too much time being jerked around and possibly blocked from using the service, app or web page.

I’m sure that I’m not the only user frustrated with annoying popups that mislead us and waste our time, all while being ineffective at all against the big companies like Google and Facebook where users are literally tricked and forced into opting in. (GDPR apparently has strengthened these two companies by hurting their smaller competition.)

Another path might be a reform of the EU GDPR and Cookie Law. I’m sure it wouldn’t be hard to get both users and tech companies behind this. I think some kinds of information about users should be better protected and require a real and easy choice of no, while other kind of more casual use such as web browsing or using an app without login could have some default rights to what can and can’t automatically be tracked, and how the information can be used, to try to strike a balance for all parties involved.

Yes I’m interested in the Declaration of Privacy. It would be nice to discuss the project and help out. Your plan sounds good so far. Regarding the design of the site, I suppose a simple static page if you must have something on the humanetech domain. The signature part sounds very technically complicated and I’m sure that means using an existing third party service. I suppose we could jump into writing the Declaration on Github to get started?

Wonderful article. I think when we talk about ‘Rights’ we should talk about ‘Responsibilities’ in the same breath, as it puts the onus not only on some third party but on ourselves as well.

In my adventure series (see also my introduction) for young people I tie these together based on the Rights of Children from the UN charter. The excerpt is from Team Savv-i: The 10 Secrets of Cyberspace, which covers the Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship devised by Dr. Mike Ribble but sets it in an adventure narrative to make it a little more palatable.

Excerpt from Team Savv-i: The 10 Secrets of Cyberspace (click to expand)

Digital rights and responsibilities

Mia did not arrive at school. Izzy sent a message and another, but received no replies. Weird… she thought. Normally she is quick as a flash. Maybe she’s sick? She pushed herself so hard… At recess, she tried again, then called her mum. Still no answer. This time, she left a voice message. Something is definitely wrong here… She became concerned. I know it. Her mind raced around. She could not concentrate and kept fidgeting.
“What’s up?” Beamer nudged her as he leaned over on the bench she was sitting.
She pulled away with a frown.
“I’m worried. Mi is not answering neither her mom.”
“Maybe they took the day off shopping.”
“Beam something is wrong, I know it.” She bit the rim of her finger.
Rob and Chi strolled by and sat down on either side of the twins.
“Gloomy lot you two,” Rob stated with the sensitivity of a bulldozer. Chi, picked up Izzy’s hand and held it, which made Rob eat his words. Why can’t I do that? he thought. She attempted a faint smile.
“Mi’s not answering any of my calls. Something has happened. Something bad.”
“Let’s go to her house during lunch.”
“Thanks Rob, I’ll like that,” She gave him a warm expression. This sent him flying with the pigeons. He felt the rims of his ears glow. No, no, not that!.. he thought, but lucky for him the redness stayed local and no one noticed. At least no one let on.
At lunch they jumped on their bikes and rode to Mia’s place. They knocked on the door and her mom opened still in her pyjamas, dark rims under her eyes and her hair in a mess.
“Oh… hi… Izzy… so sorry… I received you messages, but we’ve been through such a terrible night. I didn’t sleep at all… oh huh … come in.” She stepped aside to let them enter while attempting to tidy her hair. They walked straight up to Mia’s room.
She had cried all night. Her eyes red and puffy. Her hair matted with knots. Her pillow was a soggy mess. As they came in, she quickly hid herself.
“Mi!” Izzy leapt across the floor to her bed and put an arm around the hopeless lump covered in blankets. Mia didn’t look up, but stuck her hand out with her phone. Izzy read the sequence of messages sent from an obvious fake account as she couldn’t recognise the sender’s name. But the bully showed an intimate knowledge of her and used this to crank up the embarrassment factor. Some counted over twenty reply comments. Some so vile and full of hatred it made chills run down her spine. Izzy handed the phone to her brother. The boys stood there a little awkward. They read the message sequence.
This has been going on for a while and she hid this throughout the crowd funder campaign. She should have told us, Beamer thought. Izzy rubbed her back through the blankets. Perhaps, Mia’s exhaustion after the fundraiser contributed, but the bullying effect left her a complete and utter wreck. Time for the Team to kick in.
The boys looked at each other.
“Whoever did this will pay.” Beamer said through clenched teeth.
Izzy whispered in her ear. “We’re here to help. Don’t worry you’re not alone.” She continued telling her these messages were just disgusting rubbish from a stupid human being and nothing to do with the incredible positive and powerful Mia they all knew and loved.
“Not true…” she moaned from underneath the blankets. “I’m crap… I want to leave the Team…”
Izzy eyes moved from Mia to the boys with an expression on her face showing ‘this is really bad’.
Rob took screenshots of the bullying messages and forwarded them to a safe place in the cloud.
Chi tried to trace the source, but the coward used an anonymous service. He worked out that it all came from a single location.
Rob noticed that ‘Princess’ misspelled as ‘Prencess’. He looked up. “Remember that jerk who wrote 'Princess” that way?"
When he received blank stares, he continued. “That boy caught graffiting at our school. He sprayed Princess on the wall like that.”
“You’re right Rob… I remember… he came from the school up the road,” Beamer said. “Could be him?”
“Let’s pay him a visit later.”
Beamer and Chi nodded.
Izzy stayed with Mia and messaged her Mom to explain the situation. The boys rode back, making plans along the way and arrived just in time for their next class.
Beamer said, “I’ll show Mr Hill the messages, I won’t be long.”
“Thank you Jai, this is a serious cyber bullying incident. Your mother already contacted and let us know that your sister would stay the day with Mia. How is she?”
Beamer described the sorry state of poor Mia. Mr Hill assured him that he would do what he could to help her. He called Mia’s house straight away.
He’s not such a bad dude, Beamer thought on his way to class. He never spoke about their suspect though. They first make sure it was him, before they would hand him over.
He walked into the room. The screens showed ‘Rights and Responsibilities’. Mr Allsop continued after a pause giving him enough time to sink down in a beanbag.
“As I said, as a member of any group, say a scouts club, you gain the fun things being a scout, but you’re also expected to follow their rules. Being on the Internet is like being in a huge club. You have your rights. For example the right of access or the freedom to express yourself, but these rights go hand-in-hand with responsibilities. Such as never being abusive, to publish your own work and never plagiarise. These rules apply to everyone, not just to you.”
He paused to smile. “Like with the scouts club, it is important to know your rights and responsibilities when you become a member of the Net. This is what we mean when we talk about the secrets of cyberspace. After all, this is a club you will spend a lot of time in.”
A colourful slide appeared with the flags of the world flapping in the wind.
“The United Nations is an important organization that represents all the people around the globe. It described key rights, called basic human rights, that everyone everywhere should enjoy. In short, it is the right to knowledge, protection, participation, justice, education and to health. These lofty rights make it a club worth joining.”
He smiled again checking if they were paying attention.
“But to have these rights, we all should be responsible looking after them. Not only for ourselves, but for all.” His voice took on a sober tone that amplified the impact of his words. Then mellowed. “Sure makes sense that these rights apply in cyberspace too. As the online world is just an extension of our physical one. It all becomes one really.”
The students hung onto his every word. Such was the magnetic teaching style of Mr Allsop. The man barely larger than themselves. They loved listening to him.
“Let’s go through them and see how they apply to cyberspace.” The slide changed. He slowly read out the points as they appeared.

Your Rights and Responsibilities in Cyberspace

The right to knowledge - Everyone must have access to knowledge of how the Internet works and to become digitally literate. Your responsibility is to help anyone with this.

The right to protection - Everyone online should be protected from bullying, harassment, violence and anyone who sets out to be wilfully mean and degrading. Your responsibility is to be upstanding and help those affected.

The right to privacy - The law should protect you from attacks against your way of life and your reputation. Your responsibility is to safeguard your personal details and not misuse the details of others.

The right of participation - Everyone should be able to freely take part in discussions and forums, engage and interact on social media and websites and have the right to an opinion without fear of violence or harassment. Your responsibility is to contribute in a positive manner and understand that everyone has the right to their own views.

The right of justice - Everyone should have the opportunity to legally seek help if threatened in any way. Have the right to go to teachers, parents and authorities with concerns about online behavior. Your responsibility is to respect anyone seeking help.

The right to an education - Everyone should have a right to an education in whatever form. Your responsibility is to use the opportunities the Internet provides and help others with this if you are able.

The right to good health - Everyone has the right to feel safe physically, mentally, and emotionally whilst interacting online. Your responsibility is to treat others the way you like to be treated.

“Do the kids in Fiji know about all of this?” a boy asked.
“I’m not sure, every community has their own rules but when we link up and I’ve been told this happens in the holidays-”
The class let out a whoop.
“-it’s going to be fun exploring this with them. We will cover the basics when we are over there. We’ll show the Acceptable Use Policy of our school and talk with them about netiquette, but it is up to all of us to become role models showing appropriate digital behaviour… and… we may learn a thing or two from them.” He looked around the room.
The class continued to discuss the seven points. What was ok and not ok using the technology they used daily? Mr Allsop was surprised by the many rules new to him his students took for granted. Like it was not all okay to be mean indirectly hidden from any outsider. Like twisting the lyrics of a song for example to embarrass someone, the meaning of which most adults would miss not knowing the original lyrics.
Izzy came home from Mia’s late in the afternoon. She told Beamer and her mother that Mi was doing a little better. She ate some food and went to her room. Seated on her bed she opened her laptop and searched the Savv-i blog. Bugger! Nothing again, she thought. What’s going on? Three weeks passed and still no message from him. She listened until she could hear Beamer enter his room. Then, sneaked down the stairs avoiding the creaky parts and walked to his shed. By the faint light coming from the house entering through the shed’s side window she pressed the chunky square button on the old computer.


.
I will repeat the section on Digital Citizenship outside of the collapsed block, because they are most relevant to the discussion here:

Your Rights and Responsibilities in Cyberspace

The right to knowledge - Everyone must have access to knowledge of how the Internet works and to become digitally literate. Your responsibility is to help anyone with this.

The right to protection - Everyone online should be protected from bullying, harassment, violence and anyone who sets out to be wilfully mean and degrading. Your responsibility is to be upstanding and help those affected.

The right to privacy - The law should protect you from attacks against your way of life and your reputation. Your responsibility is to safeguard your personal details and not misuse the details of others.

The right of participation - Everyone should be able to freely take part in discussions and forums, engage and interact on social media and websites and have the right to an opinion without fear of violence or harassment. Your responsibility is to contribute in a positive manner and understand that everyone has the right to their own views.

The right of justice - Everyone should have the opportunity to legally seek help if threatened in any way. Have the right to go to teachers, parents and authorities with concerns about online behavior. Your responsibility is to respect anyone seeking help.

The right to an education - Everyone should have a right to an education in whatever form. Your responsibility is to use the opportunities the Internet provides and help others with this if you are able.

The right to good health - Everyone has the right to feel safe physically, mentally, and emotionally whilst interacting online. Your responsibility is to treat others the way you like to be treated.

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Hi @cpieters. Welcome to the community!

I added the story part to a collapsed region, because it was a bit long for this thread. They are very nice works, and a great way to educate children, I agree. Thanks for posting.

I did a search for Nine Elements of Digital Citizenship and found your reference: Nine Themes of Digital Citizenship by Mike Ribble

Also another similar named, printable poster, that looks a bit different:

9 elements of Digital Citizenship poster

We should look at how the term Digital Citizenship relates to Human Rights in the digital realm (or maybe they are synonymous?).

And for reference the Wikipedia entry for the Rights of the Child:

What you describe is not the fault of the GDPR. It is the software providers that want to keep applying things in the old ways (where you give up your personal data). There are many dark patterns at play here. As far as I know the GDPR requires opt-in (the NO option) to be the default, so it is the easiest and should be a no-brainer (no need to go through all configuraiton settings to opt-out).

Also they have specified rules for how a Privacy Policy must be drafted, and thereby removed much of the ugly legalese you’d usually find here. The problem here is that - with easy to understand texts - lawyers can still build in the same loopholes that you just as quickly will overlook.

But I agree GDPR is still far from perfect and has already shown a number of dark sides, like e.g. an important downside is that it favors the big tech companies, who can easily throw enough money in their system to comply with the rules, while for SMB companies this is a struggle (but that will only be a hurdle at the start, as new software will be developed from the ground up to be compliant).

The annoying popups are once again choices of the software creators, and there are automated solutions to get around most of them (consent frameworks, dialog suppressors, tracker blockers, etc.). But better solutions are still maturing. Note that I do not find the popups all that annoying (except if they have dark patterns), because they make me aware of the bad practices of the site.

Too much going off-topic: Yes, GDPR must be further improved, and we need additional laws to get things in order!


Regarding the design of the site, I suppose a simple static page if you must have something on the humanetech domain.

Yes, in the bullet list for the project I was thinking of a single Markdown document - easily edited with any editor and stored on Github, that is automatically transformed to html by the static site generator that creates the community website (Jekyll).

The signature part sounds very technically complicated and I’m sure that means using an existing third party service. I suppose we could jump into writing the Declaration on Github to get started?

Yes, the bullet points are just a possible feature list. Collecting signatories is of secondary importance after creating a good text, and could also be omitted if too complex. But it can reside as a feature request in the Issue tracker of the project.

Note that my awesome-humane-tech list contains a number of example Manifesto projects in the Ethics section from which we may borrow (parts of) this mechanism.

Besides drafting texts, we can draft and launch a first awareness campaign to attract attention to the effort.

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Hi @Free, I saw you created Declaration of Privacy to follow up on the project. I had quickly created a Github repo humanetech-community-digital-rights for it.

I like the name you’ve chosen, but at the same time it does not fully cover the whole digital human rights spectrum, only the privacy aspects (though these are the most pervasive part of the rights).

Still it might not be a bad idea to compartmentalize and start with Declaration of Privacy, but then have additional declarations later, all of them part of the Universal Declaration of Digital Rights. For the awareness program the theme can be called Digital Rights then, and the campaign is Privacy Declaration. WDYT?

Sounds good! I focused on privacy because I wasn’t sure of other aspects of humane technology which could be considered rights. Also I wanted to keep it simple and memorable, easy to understand, and not confusing.

I am glad there are several schools of thought as this is a wider challenge than one particular expertise. The AI is one issue, but there are many more. From my angle I look at the ethical use of behavior science in development of new technologies (not just AI), as well as the wellbeing aspects of technology both cognitive and physical. I think we need to take a broader swoop at it by having an overall manifesto and different categories beneath (as they each have their challenges, positions and benefits).

Any ethics-related frameworks, articles and studies are most welcome in our new Ethics category, @ForbesOste. Especially those in behavior science, as that is most closely related to many of the technological harms that are discussed in our community.


Another thing related to this Digital Rights thread is the MeWe Privacy Bill of Rights I encountered today:

MeWe Privacy Bill of Rights

A very interesting resource on the Electronic Freedom Foundation site:

This could be a second sub-component of this theme after Declaration of Privacy.