TECHumanity Watch (THW) is a tracking resource for considerations of humanity, issues of freedom, ethical standards, and individual privacy in the development and implementation of information technologies worldwide.

A Bill of Rights for the Information Age

1. Human rights, as declared in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, should be reasonably and prudently considered in all processes of IT development, use, and application. The consideration should take place in the widest possible forum feasible, and involve representatives of all those who will be affected, as well as appropriate expert, legally mandated, and ethical authorities.

2. Decisions which directly affect a human being may not be made by an IT device alone. IT systems can be used as an aid to decision making, but only in circumstances where a designated person is accountable for the decision.

3. Humans affected by IT device-aided decisions should be fully informed at all times, and have incontrovertible right to appeal all such decisions through the courts of law or through formal appeal processes.

4. Personal data is the property of the person who is the subject of the data, or that person's legal parent or legal guardian where that person is a juvenile or unable to act on his or her own behalf. Such property rights are irrevocable. Permission must be obtained from the owner for use of personal data for all uses, including personal reports, aggregated formats, linkage to other data or transfer to other computer systems.

5. Unintended or unrecognized consequences of any type resulting from the application of information technologies are the responsibility of those who have implemented the application, and subject to remedy and compensation for actual or perceived damages. A court should be able to award damages to an individual or group.

6. If IT devices or applications displace human workers, they should be compensated and provided retraining within their local communities. If the IT usage is unsatisfactory and a worker is to be employed again, the displaced worker should be given the first right in the job.

7. All IT devices and applications should be accompanied by a full, complete, and understandable written statement of operating instructions, the functions and performance of the device or application, and any known or suspected hazards connected with use. The written statement should be provided in all languages in use within the community where marketing occurs. Statements about the performance of devices or applications which prove to be unwarranted would be open to redress through court action.

8. All IT applications should conform to best equal opportunities standards, as should the IT industry.

9. An independent Commission should be established to register and review the content and use of all networks and databases containing personal material, and to register all new applications. The Commission should have power to seek modification, ban or proceed to court action in relation to any failure to meet appropriate standards or the terms of this Bill of Rights. Given a reasonable warning, devices or applications currently in use must conform or be dismantled.

10. All IT applications and devices for which a purpose or use is surveillance should be regulated in the public interest. No private or commercial sale of such devices to the public should be allowed. All use of such instruments by any government for any reasons should be approved by a court of law prior to use.

11. Specific legislation should be passed to ensure the protection of personal data, prevent unauthorized access to computer systems, and protect the copyright or patent rights of IT designers, except that no such copyright or patent shall be issued which infringes upon the human tradition of knowledge sharing or limits the common good.

12. Customers in any country should have the right to purchase equipment or programs from manufacturers at the lowest price the manufacturer offers in any location, with due allowance for differences relating to costs of transport, installation, and local taxation.

13. Information technologies should be confined to developments for peaceful uses and should be freely transferable to all countries. An international aid fund should be established to assist in technology transfer to poor communities, with an expert sub-committee charged with responsibility for establishing sensitive processes for cross-cultural transfers.

14. An independent body, linked to the commission identified in 9 above, should be established to keep this Bill of Rights under review, and to co-ordinate and in other ways enhance the ethical soundness of IT progress.

15. The rights of individuals stated in this Bill should be the entitlement of all people of whatever country.

Bills of Rights are fine notions, an outward sign of democracy at work, although they often make dull businesslike reading. They are, however, a necessary and regular reassertion of humanity's control over its own scientific inventions. John Stuart Mill expressed the true emotions with grace and insight -- " I am not charmed with an ideal of life held out by those who think that the normal state of human beings is that of struggling to get on; that the trampling, crushing, elbowing, and treading on each other's heels, which form the existing type of social life, are the most desirable lot of human kind, or anything but the disagreeable symptoms of one of the phases of industrial progress." Let us overcome those disagreeable symptoms, bring out the greatness of these new technologies, and have them flow with us, gently, sensitively, creatively, a help and companion to all peoples, a technology to support and sustain humanity. [ - pp192-4, The Integrity of Intelligence: A Bill of Rights for the Information Age; Bryan Glastonbury, Walter LaMendola, 1992, St. Martin's Press ]