A Declaration on Digital Rights: Embedding human rights in a new deal for the digital age

Over the past two decades, digital technology has come to permeate almost every sphere of daily life – from accessing essential public services, to communicating with friends and family members, to navigating workplaces or educational settings, to electoral and democratic processes.

This ongoing period of technological change into the era of AI has brought public benefits including enhanced inclusion, greater opportunities for self-expression, and positive outcomes of economic growth. But there are also a growing number of serious concerns about the wide-ranging implications for our fundamental human rights in the digital age that are often experienced most acutely by already marginalised communities, embedding and amplifying existing inequalities in a digitally mediated society.

At Demos we believe a new deal is needed to upgrade democracy, and rebuild trust between citizens and the state. In this report, we make the case that a demonstrated commitment from the government to preserving human rights in the face of rapid technological change will be critical for a new deal in the digital age.

As such, based on interviews and experts with over 40 technology and human rights experts in the UK and internationally, we highlight how data-driven technologies are currently undermining seven key human rights. Additionally, we provide the following recommendations for the government on how to uphold these rights in the digital age in order to rebuild trust between the citizen and the state: