Digital Rule of Law | Digital Rights Bill

▶ Drafting Team｜Judicial Reform Foundation – Digital Legal System Special Project Group
▶ Version｜Version 1.1 (Open for public consultation, non-final)
▶ 英文版（English version）
▶ Click here to download

Table of Contents

• Preamble
• 1. The Indispensability of Privacy to a Free and Democratic Society
• 2. The Right to Data Minimization
• 3. The Right to Substantive Alternatives
• 4. Fostering a Democratic and Free Digital Environment and Safeguarding Public Mental Health
• 5. Emphasis on Procedural and Substantive Due Process
• 6. Development or Use of Automated Systems (Including Artificial Intelligence) by the Government
• 6-1. Prerequisites for Government Development or Use of Automated Systems
• 6-2. Necessary Procedures and Obligations for Government Use of Automated Systems
• 7. Exceptions: General Restrictive Measures
• 7-1. Handling Illegal Content with the Government as the Principal Actor
• 7-2. Handling Illegal Content with Industry/Civil Self-Regulatory Mechanisms as the Principal Actor
• 7-3. Independent Supervisory Mechanism: (Administrative Remedies / Non-Judicial Oversight)
• 8. Exceptions: Special Restrictive Measures in Warfare and Disasters
• 9. National Policy for Digital Freedom
• 10. Universal Empowerment and the Right to Participate

 

Preamble

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To enable citizens to thrive in a digital age increasingly subject to surveillance and censorship, focusing on fundamental rights is paramount. This "Digital Basic Act" serves as a systematic and preventive foundational norm addressing digital authoritarianism and surveillance capitalism.

Today, we live on a massive construction site known as "digital engineering," where power relations within human society are undergoing drastic transformations. These shifts in power structures stem primarily from the broad and permanent interconnection facilitated by the internet and its potential to enable totalitarian rule; the potential for civic empowerment through network connectivity coupled with dramatic industrial transformation; the economy of attention (treating human attention as an economic resource) and the spread of surveillance; and even the reconceptualization of the nature of human thought—issues that have profoundly and fundamentally challenged our understanding of ourselves and of society.

Emerging digital systems monitor, correlate, analyze, and influence the behavior of billions of individuals trillions of times every day. Before long, these raw forms of large-scale social control will mature, at which point every individual's thoughts will be directly linked to the network from birth to death.

Where our generation stands today is still a construction site full of potential; fortunately, this so-called construction site has not yet been built into an inescapable panopticon! The network we are building may already be shaping human thought, but it remains our creation, and we have the capacity to effect change together.

We, as the last generation of humans still possessing a choice, choose to unite and build a solid foundation for freedom and democracy within this still-malleable digital engineering.

To realize the construction of a digital society of the people, by the people, and for the people, we hereby initiate the establishment of a legal framework defining the civil rights and governmental responsibilities that a digitally free society ought to possess.

 

1. The Indispensability of Privacy to a Free and Democratic Society

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1. The privacy rights of the people in the digital age are crucial to the survival of democracy, comprising the following three constituent elements:
   • Right to Confidentiality: The ability of individuals to ensure that our communications are understood only by those we intend to receive them. 
   • Right to Anonymity: The ability of individuals to send and receive publicly accessible content without revealing who said what and who listened to whom.
   • Right to Autonomy: Protection against coercive intervention and control by "parties violating our confidentiality or anonymity." 
2. Due to its high relevance and externalities, privacy should not be regarded as a transactional commodity (something individuals surrender in exchange for "free" services from specific corporations), but rather as a fundamental environmental quality protecting freedom and democracy within the power relations among the people, the government, and corporations.
3. As a general rule, the government shall not interfere with the people's right to acquire, use, distribute, create, promote, or upgrade tools or mechanisms that protect confidentiality and anonymity. Any restriction on the aforementioned rights must comply with the principle of legal reservation and the principle of proportionality. These tools or mechanisms include, but are not limited to:
   • Cryptography 
   • Anti-tracking methods, such as data or metadata obfuscation, signal obfuscation
   • VPNs
4. The government should support and assist self-initiated promotional actions by civil society, provided that it does not intervene in the operation and direction of such civic actions.

 

2. The Right to Data Minimization

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1. In accordance with the right to informational self-determination, individuals have the right to demand that the datafication of their online and offline behaviors be kept to a minimum.
2. The government has a duty to ensure the thorough minimization of datafication across the public and private sectors—that is, minimizing the conversion of real-life situations into data that can be recorded, transmitted, stored, analyzed, or even used to train automated models.
3. Data minimization shall serve as a prerequisite for all "consent"-based personal data protection and privacy regulations.
4. The government has a duty to promote, and by ________ to ensure, that all digital services or products in the public or private sector incorporate privacy-by-default and privacy-by-design, fully realizing the people's right to data minimization.
5. To uphold the people's right to know and right to informational self-determination, barring legal restrictions, everyone has the right to know, correct, and delete any information held about them by any public or private entity, including but not limited to labeling, inferences, assumptions, and classifications regarding:
   • Personality and character traits 
   • Ideology and political leanings 
   • Sexual life or sexual orientation 
   • Religious or philosophical beliefs 
   • Health, genetic, or biometric information 
   • Race, ethnic origin, or immigration status 
   • Trade union membership 
   • Past criminal records (not limited to convictions)

 

3. The Right to Substantive Alternatives

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To uphold the people's right to digital self-determination, individuals have the right to determine and control the extent and aspects of their lives that are digitized or conducted online. Therefore, even as the public and private sectors accelerate digitization and shift vast numbers of services and relationships online, they must respect the people's right to meaningful alternatives:

1. Right to Offline Alternatives:
   • In addition to ensuring that people are guaranteed privacy and equality when accessing public services via the internet, the government must ensure that individuals can choose to fulfill their civic duties and engage in civic participation offline. No one interacting with the public sector shall be forced to go online or leave unnecessary digital footprints. The same applies to individuals accessing critical infrastructure.
   • Both the government and critical infrastructure providers have the obligation to:
     • Establish: Actively develop foundational and viable procedures allowing individuals to fulfill civic duties and civic participation offline. Alternatives must not be discriminatory or inferior in effectiveness to their online counterparts.
     • Inform: Inform the public of the availability of offline alternatives.
     • Actively instruct without discrimination or disadvantage: Actively guide those who choose offline alternatives, without erecting barriers or treating them unequally because of their choice.
   • The government is responsible for ensuring legal compliance. If an individual decides to remain offline for life, the government is obligated to ensure that their civil rights and basic livelihood are unimpeded.
   • By ________, the absence or legal non-compliance of the aforementioned obligations shall be deemed an infringement upon the people's right to alternatives.
2. Right to Non-Personalized Alternatives:
   • Everyone has the right to receive non-personalized digital services. Any restriction must have a legal basis.
3. Right to Use Non-Digital Currency (Right to Cash):
   • Everyone has the right to make offline payments using legal tender without automated tracking (i.e., cash). The government shall not deprive citizens of the right to use physical legal tender.

 

4. Fostering a Democratic and Free Digital Environment and Safeguarding Public Mental Health

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1. The people have the right to live in a free social environment, and this right shall not be diminished as the social environment becomes increasingly digitized. Therefore, the government has a duty to protect citizens from living in a digital environment dominated by commercial interests (surveillance capitalism) or interfered with by political forces, and has a duty to actively prevent and eliminate risks posed by the digital environment to the public mental health of citizens in their online or offline lives.
2. The direction of establishing and operating the digital environment shall be grounded in the values of democracy and freedom, including but not limited to the following guidelines:
   • Expanding the understanding and legal protection of "privacy rights" to encompass an "environmental governance" dimension, particularly:
     • With the expansion of public and private sector digitization, every action of individuals in their online and offline lives—including internal information searching and consumption, and external information dissemination and expression—becomes a target of "datafication," resulting in an environment where every citizen is hard-pressed to escape surveillance, analysis, labeling, or being comprehended or influenced by commercial profits or political forces.
     • Privacy rights serve as breathing room and boundaries for the free development of a dynamic personality, and constitute the foundational prerequisite for the exercise of human rights such as freedom of expression and freedom of assembly and association. Therefore, an individual's waiver of privacy carries high external costs for the democratic community as a whole. To manage and reduce these high external costs to democratic society, reference should be made to the discourse and protection of environmental rights, moderately restricting social relationships where personal data or personal conduct is traded as consideration for "free" or low-cost benefits or services.
     • The government has a duty to prevent effects similar to a "Panopticon" from occurring in digital life, including:
       • Conscious or unconscious self-censorship of behavior, including speech (expression), information searching, and information consumption;
       • Even when deciding not to self-censor: the risks borne, chronic anxiety, and cognitive load that a free person should not have to endure.
   • Expanding the understanding and legal protection of "public mental health" to include an e-mental health dimension, particularly:
     • Establishing comprehensive prevention and treatment policies for addictive digital services, including appropriate restrictions on their use by minors or vulnerable groups.
     • Addiction prevention policies should not be limited to minors or vulnerable populations. Where addictive digital services pose a high risk of harm to adults' mental health, or a high risk of significantly influencing adults' political and ideological intentions and speech without their knowledge, appropriate restrictions should likewise be imposed under the premise of complying with democratic and free values and the rule-of-law framework.
     • [To be supplemented later with more e-mental health dimensions, e.g., referencing Australian guidelines]
   • (Pending drafting: Regarding the decline/commodification of collective attention [capture & auction]      
     • Anti-distraction; anti-shallow thinking, which impairs citizens' critical thinking capacities and the "constitution" of a democratic society
     • Attention: monetized, commodified (let alone peace of mind that has become a waste dumpsite)
   • Everyone has the right to receive non-personalized content and search results. Any restrictions must be based on law.
3. The government has a duty to keep pace with the times by regularly convening civil society representatives and external experts to evaluate and ensure that the direction of digital environment governance aligns with the advancement of democratic and free values within the prevailing social and technological context.
4. The government shall support and assist self-initiated civic actions that promote the advancement of democracy and freedom in the digital environment, provided that it does not intervene in the operation and direction of such civic actions.

 

5. Emphasis on Procedural and Substantive Due Process

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The mindset of "Move fast and break things"—previously criticized as the tech industry's disregard for established legal and social norms in its race for speed and market dominance—remains highly evident today not only in private enterprises (such as the commercial development and application of artificial intelligence), but also in numerous instances where government agencies rush into technological applications first and seek authorization later. Accordingly, based on its duty to protect the people, the government shall ensure that:

1. When developing or applying emerging technologies (such as artificial intelligence), public authorities shall regularly invite civil society organizations and external experts to conduct human rights impact assessments, taking meticulous care not to let superficial gains in efficiency or convenience override deep-seated freedom and democracy values and the legal framework.
2. Regarding the private sector's unsparing pursuit of development at the expense of infringing upon people's privacy and other rights and freedoms, the government shall establish effective communication and regulatory mechanisms early on to ensure that people's rights are not impaired while encouraging innovation.
3. Drawing inspiration from the Fruit of the Poisonous Tree Doctrine, automated/AI models trained on data acquired through illicit means are likewise tainted. Both public and private sectors shall verify that the training data and training processes used for their AI models possess a lawful basis for collection, and that such utilization behaviors are lawful. The government shall establish a professional and independent auditing mechanism.
4. While encouraging civilian innovation, the government shall simultaneously promote the humanistic dimensions that should be valued in the research, development, and use of emerging technologies. For instance, compliance indicators such as privacy protection and human rights assessments should be incorporated as influential scoring criteria in innovation-incentivizing competitions or awards.
5. [Content related to training for government officials to be added]

 

6. Development or Use of Automated Systems (Including Artificial Intelligence) by the Government

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1. Regarding the development and use of automated systems (including artificial intelligence), attention must be paid to their social context and their impact on human rights. More broadly, consideration must be given to how artificial intelligence progressively alters power structures among individuals, the state, and enterprises/capital, and whether the direction of such changes aligns with or creates resistance against the values of freedom, democracy, and the rule of law.
2. Based on its duty to protect the people, the government shall promptly legislate and enforce legal frameworks concerning automated systems (including artificial intelligence):
   • Moral, ethical, and value judgments shall be made exclusively by humans, and decisions affecting fundamental rights shall be made exclusively by humans.
   • Responsibility for automated decisions shall be borne by natural or legal persons. Natural or legal persons using automated decision-making or assistive tools, regardless of the degree, shall bear external responsibility for their decisions or actions.
   • Every individual subject to an automated decision that significantly impacts their life has the right to an independent evaluation and decision made by a human.
   • Decisions concerning life and death, personal liberty, freedom of movement, freedom of expression, and freedom of assembly and association shall be made exclusively by humans.
   • The deployment of automated systems in areas that may infringe upon or diminish people's rights or freedoms must undergo societal debate and be subject to statutory reservation.
   • Reference should be made to the risk-tier framework of the EU AI Act to ban applications of AI by the public and private sectors in entirely prohibited use cases, strictly regulate high-risk use cases, and ensure that people's rights are protected in limited-risk use cases.
   • Regulatory targets shall include government agencies in addition to the private sector.
   • The government has a duty to keep pace with the times by regularly convening civil society representatives and external experts to evaluate whether relevant legislation and supervision are adequate to address the risks of automated systems within the prevailing social and technological context.

6-1. Prerequisites for Government Development or Use of Automated Systems

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1. Purpose limitation: Must be strictly confined to public interest purposes.
2. The people's right to know must be safeguarded, fulfilling two major dimensions: government transparency (the public knowing what the government is doing) and the data subject's right to know (the individual knowing they are being processed by AI).
3. Tiered statutory reservation shall be a prerequisite for the development or use of automated systems (including artificial intelligence) by the government. Applications involving significant rights must disclose information prior to development, incorporate extensive input from civil society and external experts, obtain permission from relevant legislative bodies, formulate relevant regulations, and establish periodic review mechanisms before proceeding.
4. Government obligation of information disclosure:
   • Timing of information disclosure: At least 3 months prior to the impending development or use of the system.
   • Information to be disclosed at a minimum:
     • Training data (proposed or actual)
     • Sources of training data and legal basis (proposed or actual)
     • Whether additional data is required; if so, its sources, proposed acquisition methods, and legal basis:
       • [Within government systems] Data from other agencies
       • [Outside government systems] Acquisition/collection of more data, including indirect and direct collection from civil society entities.
   • Method of model training (proposed or actual), such as supervised/reinforcement methods
   • Parameters
   • Human rights impact assessments and risk control mechanisms

6-2. Necessary Procedures and Obligations for Government Use of Automated Systems

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1. The government shall safeguard the data subject's right to know, notifying individuals affected by automated (assisted) decisions a reasonable time prior to the commencement of the procedure as to which step utilizes or is assisted by automated systems.
2. The people's right to opt out of automated individual decision-making (referencing Article 22 of the GDPR)
   • For decisions producing legal effects or similarly significant impacts, individuals have the right to refuse the government's use of automated systems regarding them. If the assistive effect of an automated system exerts a certain degree of influence on a decision, individuals likewise have the right to refuse and demand a fully non-automated decision-making procedure.
   • The government shall inform citizens of this right within a reasonable period prior to the commencement of the procedure. Where prior notification is not feasible, individuals shall be clearly notified of this right and instructed on remedy procedures concurrently with the notification of the decision.
3. The government has a duty to periodically review the use of automated systems:
   • The government shall periodically (annually) convene civil society representatives and external experts to conduct reviews and reassessments of risks. Systems raising concerns of human rights violations or discrimination shall be suspended immediately pending confirmation that a new model meets standards.
   • The government shall periodically (every 3 years) convene civil society representatives and external experts to determine whether it is advisable to retrain/update or adjust automated systems. Factors to consider, alongside human rights protection and prohibition of discrimination, shall also ensure:
     • The absence of the "Clever Hans effect," ensuring models do not rely on socially irrelevant features as parameters.
     • That social evolution and innovative breakthroughs are not suppressed or rigidified by the feedback loop of automated systems.

 

7. Exceptions: General Restrictive Measures

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The government has a duty to protect and promote a neutral and open internet, and shall not block or restrict any content, services, or applications without a legal basis.
When handling illegal content in cyberspace, the government shall adopt proportionate measures that fully respect people's rights, including freedom of expression and freedom of information, and shall not establish generalized behavioral monitoring obligations or content censorship mechanisms for any entity or enterprise.    

7-1. Handling Illegal Content with the Government as the Principal Actor

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1. Any engagement by government agencies in network blocking, restriction of internet freedom, free internet shutdowns, content restrictions/takedowns, or restrictions on people's access to encryption technology or the aforementioned rights must comply with clear legal reservation and be executed only as a last resort.
2. Principle of Legal Reservation: When the state formulates the aforementioned authorizing regulations, it shall adhere to the principle of clarity, explicitly governing legal elements; the scope of implementation must be specific and conform to minimal infringement, due process, and legal remedies. Merely citing procedural laws or similar non-substantive laws is insufficient to serve as a legal basis and violates the principle of legal reservation.
3. Emergency measures shall likewise comply with legal reservation and the principle of last resort, and must be equipped with an immediate ex-post review mechanism. If an immediate ex-post review determines a measure lacks grounds, or if no ex-post review determination is made within a reasonable period, the status quo ante shall be restored immediately.
4. The same applies when government agencies execute network blocking or content removal through industry or civil self-regulatory mechanisms.
5. If an industry or civil self-regulatory mechanism refuses execution on the grounds that a government agency's restrictive measure is unlawful, the government agency shall not impose unfavorable administrative dispositions or extra-legal pressure upon the industry or civil self-regulatory mechanism. If execution is still deemed necessary, the agency may petition the independent supervisory mechanism for a determination, and the determination of the independent supervisory mechanism shall prevail.

7-2. Handling Illegal Content with Industry/Civil Self-Regulatory Mechanisms as the Principal Actor

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1. Entities receiving requests from government agencies to execute restrictive measures shall verify that regulatory elements have been met before carrying them out. If government agencies exert pressure, industry or civil self-regulatory mechanisms may lodge complaints or reports.
2. Network blocking or content removal mechanisms proactively established by industry or civil self-regulatory mechanisms shall comply with:
   • Regularly reviewing and adjusting network blocking mechanisms to ensure they represent the last resort and minimal infringement under the prevailing social and technological context.
   • Upholding transparency, respecting the people's right to know, preventing political interference with internet freedom, and enabling civil society and academic institutions to exercise oversight through information disclosure.
   • Ensuring the realization of people's right to remedies, allowing individuals to raise objections regarding restrictive measures and receive prompt processing.
3. Where the compliance costs of the aforementioned periodic adjustments, transparency, and remedy processing are excessively burdensome for small/non-profit enterprises, the government shall provide reasonable subsidies.

7-3. Independent Supervisory Mechanism: (Administrative Remedies / Non-Judicial Oversight)

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1. The government shall establish an independent supervisory mechanism tasked with:
   • Proactively investigating measures failing to comply with legal reservation, measures failing to adhere to legal requirements, and instances of government pressure on enterprises or individuals, while receiving complaints or reports from enterprises or individuals to hold government agencies accountable;
   • Ensuring the realization of people's right to remedies, enabling individuals to lodge objections regarding restrictive measures and receive prompt processing, regardless of whether their objections are based on challenges to legal reservation, legal requirements, or the measure itself;
   • Preventing public authorities from excessively restricting freedom of expression and freedom of information, and further preventing political forces from interfering with internet freedom by ensuring the transparency of government restrictive measures, respecting the people's right to know, and enabling civil society and academic institutions to verify actions through information disclosure; and
   • Periodically reviewing and adjusting restrictive measure mechanisms to ensure they constitute the last resort and minimal infringement under the prevailing social and technological context.
2. This supervisory mechanism shall not affect the possibility for enterprises or individuals to seek judicial remedies.

 

8. Exceptions: Special Restrictive Measures in Warfare and Disasters

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1. Regarding special emergency situations—such as major natural disasters, large-scale epidemics, or military conflicts—where the boundaries of public authority must be temporarily and moderately expanded based on major collective public interest:
   • The government has a duty, prior to the occurrence of special emergency situations, to proactively prepare and establish mechanisms centered on democratic rule-of-law values, including legal regulations (reasonable timeframes and continuation conditions), personnel deployment and jurisdictional boundaries, software and hardware technology development, and facility deployment.
   • The government has a duty to conduct periodic drills and adjustments to ensure that the scope and manner of public authority expansion under such mechanisms conform to the principles of last resort and minimal infringement within the prevailing social and technological context.
   • The government has a duty to open information and invite civil society representatives and external experts to participate in the processes of mechanism establishment, periodic drills, and adjustments.
   • The government has a duty to promote public opinion mechanisms—ranging from simple public expression to robust mechanisms for renewing public mandates such as elections and referendums—formulated by various sectors to sustain the essence of democracy during special emergency situations, and to complete the legalization process.
   • Upon the occurrence of each special emergency situation, the government has a duty to conduct ex-post reviews and complete improvement operations within a reasonable timeframe.
2. To safeguard the right to connect, the government has a duty to promote network resilience:
   • In scenarios such as natural disasters, failures of network infrastructure, sabotage or control by external hostile forces (e.g., submarine cable severance), or military conflicts, the government has a duty to proactively prepare and build diverse, decentralized network infrastructure to eliminate avoidable or mitigable damages or rights restrictions. Relevant ministries shall report progress to the parliament periodically (military secrets may be reported separately).
   • The government shall support and assist self-initiated civic actions concerning digital civil defense, network resilience, and the education and promotion of decentralized servers, provided that it does not intervene in the operation and direction of such civic actions.

 

9. National Policy for Digital Freedom

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Amidst the massive digitization and automation underway in the public and private sectors, power relations among individuals, the state, and enterprises are undergoing drastic transformations. To protect people's rights and democratic principles in the digital world, the government has a responsibility to ensure that power relations within the contemporary political and economy landscape align with the ultimate goal of upholding freedom, justice, and solidarity. Policies and legislation shall strive toward a common goal: steering the development of a digital society toward a free and democratic society "for the people, of the people, and built by the people."

At this juncture, the government must confront the crisis of ecological dependency. Similar to the 2008 Wall Street financial crisis but far more severe, today's major tech corporations have once again engendered a social dependency that makes holding them effectively accountable difficult. Structures that are "too big to fail" and frequently "too big to regulate" have re-emerged—this time, with ecological dependencies far more intimately intertwined with people's daily lives.

From ordinary citizens to SMEs and the public sector, everyone's daily lives and operations depend on storage, computing power, and "convenience" controlled by a handful of corporations, causing us to lose control and ownership over the means of production. The information and cultural environments have begun centralizing around big tech companies, with most social interactions and information access now enclosed within environments where profit-driven corporations sit at the center of every interaction, monitoring, analyzing, nudging (a euphemism for manipulation), and frequently commercializing or monetizing people's behavior.

Under this dependency on a few profit-driven corporations and the concentration of resources and means of production, neither freedom nor genuine democracy can develop sustainably or even survive.

The government must assume the responsibility of fostering and empowering civil society to rebalance the crisis of ecological dependency and move toward a human-centric political economy system. Accordingly, the government bears the following responsibilities:

1. Reducing the public sector's or the broader private sector's dependency on a handful of profit-driven enterprises. The government shall periodically convene civil society representatives and scholars to evaluate the dependency of basic livelihoods and government units on a few profit-driven enterprises, jointly formulating strategies and action guidelines to mitigate dependency relationships that threaten economic democracy, and ensuring that neither the public nor private sectors achieve a level of dependency on any profit-driven enterprise that would obstruct potential regulation. The measurement of dependency levels and relationships shall not solely consider low pricing or free services, but should focus on whether substantive dependencies are generated with the public sector or civilian economy, thereby creating conditions where entities become too big to fail or too big to effectively regulate and supervise. (Note: Legal discourse on this part is under development, and evaluation methods await consultation with economists and social scientists.)
2. [Internalization of external costs / Free riders must bear corresponding costs]. Establishing appropriate frameworks so that all market participants benefiting from digital transformation shoulder their social responsibility and fairly and moderately share the costs of public goods, services, and infrastructure for the benefit of all.
3. What is derived from the public shall be used for the public; the government shall fulfill the principle of public money, public code. The government has an obligation to release software, AI models, and information systems built with taxpayers' money under free software licenses, enabling the public to read, use, and modify the source code paid for by taxpayers' funds, thereby reducing technological monopolies and promoting open source and free software.
4. When formulating legal norms and policies, the government should make corresponding distinctions based on the fundamental differences between profit-driven enterprises and non-profit communities, offering policy support and compliance guidance to non-profit communities (provided that it does not intervene in their operations and direction).
5. When formulating legal norms and policies, the government shall incorporate the reduction of dependency on a few profit-driven enterprises into its considerations, evaluating whether policies:
   • Instead increase society's overall dependency on existing large profit-driven enterprises;
   • Render smaller current enterprises unable to compete with existing large profit-driven enterprises;
   • Excessively raise market entry barriers and preemptively obstruct the development of future novel solutions or non-profit solutions.
6. To develop social resilience for freedom and democracy in the digital age, the government shall actively formulate encouraging regulations and policies to promote the development of:
   • Open technology (civic tech), open standards (industry standards, technical standards);
   • Free and open-source software, free hardware;
   • Interoperability among digital services;
   • Open culture, digital public spheres, and digital public goods (e.g., Wikipedia);
   • Civic mutual aid, civic participation, and open projects;
   • Decentralization and the rational redistribution of digital resources to reduce dependency on a small number of profit-driven entities:
     • Storage capacity
     • Computing power
     • Capacity for developing artificial intelligence
     • Capacity for connecting to the global network
   • Full expression of cultural diversity and malleability within the digital environment;
   • Innovative practices implementing human rights such as privacy and informational self-determination within the digital environment.
7. The government shall support and assist self-initiated civic actions, provided that it does not intervene in the operation and direction of such actions.

 

10. Universal Empowerment and the Right to Participate

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1. Universal Empowerment and the Right to Participate:
   • Everyone has the right to education, training, and lifelong learning to achieve autonomous existence in the digital world.
   • Everyone has the right to digital democratic literacy (including literacy skills and the right to know the commercial, profit, and governance models behind the digital tools they use) and technical training, as well as mainstream channels to actively participate in formulating technologies and governance models, jointly fostering a freer, more empowered, diverse, and democratic digital, informational, and cultural environment.
2. Corresponding Obligations of the Government:
   • The government has a duty to actively guarantee the aforementioned rights to education and participation, and to provide channels—based on age and economic background—enabling individuals to effectively acquire basic digital democratic capabilities. Basic digital democratic capabilities shall be treated like "literacy," as a foundational competence that everyone ought to possess in the digital age, serving as a fundamental prerequisite for contemporary dynamic development of selfhood and self-determination/autonomy.
   • The knowledge items encompassed within basic digital democratic capabilities include, but are not limited to:
     • Rights awareness
     • The right of all individuals to learn all basic and advanced digital skills
     • Information environment literacy
     • Network governance and platform governance
     • Modality and legal frameworks of public sector collection of personal data and behaviors, and internet supervision
     • Modality and legal frameworks of private sector collection of personal data and behaviors
     • Risks or potential harms to individual and collective democracy posed by democracy-harming business models, such as deliberate addictive design (eroding attention and autonomy), excessive collection or analysis of human behavior (anonymity in accessing info), selling personal data and behaviors, or monetizing personal data and behaviors
     • Potential exploitation of mainstream digital tools by political forces, public authorities, or external hostile forces (forces threatening freedom and democracy) beyond purely commercial forces
     • Methods of participating in the development of civic tech, encouraging open-source and free software and hardware
     • […Feedback and thoughts welcomed...]
   • National compulsory education shall incorporate the cultivation of basic digital democratic capabilities as one of its core objectives. The government shall ensure that (starting in ____) the contents of national compulsory education, in addition to the aforementioned proficiencies, also encompass the following digital competencies:
     • Basic programming languages: reading and even writing (Consult technical experts on what are the minimum skills to know, e.g., Python? C?)
     • Basic computer science
     • Basic networking (including but not limited to TCP/IP, basic server setup, basic website setup and management, decentralized networks)
     • Basic AI introduction (including but not limited to basic principles, characteristics, and limitations of artificial intelligence)
     • Basic encrypted communication tools, etc.
     • Network governance (current practices and other alternatives)
     • Issues raised by contemporary civil communities regarding digital democracy
     • Encouraging participation in the development of civic technology, encouraging open-source and free software and hardware
     • Encourage participation in the development of civic technology, encourage open-source and free software and hardware
     • […Feedback and thoughts welcomed...] (Consult technical experts on what are the minimum skills to know)
   • The government has a duty to periodically review strategies and operations for promoting various knowledge items and, keeping pace with the times, to regularly convene civil society representatives and external experts in accordance with prevailing social and technological contexts to evaluate and expand new knowledge items and compulsory education contents.
   • Regarding the mechanism establishment and periodic adjustment of knowledge items and compulsory education contents, the government shall open information and invite civil society representatives and scholars to participate.
3. The government shall support and assist self-initiated actions regarding digital literacy education and promotion by civil society, provided that it does not intervene in the operation and direction of such civic actions.