The Government adopts the Charter of Digital Rights to articulate a frame of reference that guarantees the rights of citizens in the new digital reality

The Spanish Government has adopted the Charter of Digital Rights. Without being normative, this Charter offers a frame of reference to guarantee the rights of citizens in the new digital reality and aims to recognize the challenges posed by the adaptation of current rights to the virtual and digital environment.

The text includes a set of principles and rights to guide future normative projects and the development of public policies so as to guarantee the protection of individual and collective rights in the new digital scenarios. It therefore lays down the principles on which to base the safeguarding of fundamental rights in the digital arena.

The purpose of the Charter is descriptive, prospective and assertive. Descriptive of the digital contexts and scenarios that give rise to new conflicts and situations that must be resolved; prospective in anticipating future scenarios that can already be predicted; and assertive because it revalidates and legitimizes the principles, techniques and policies that should be applied in the present and future digital environments and spaces.

Likewise, the Charter of Digital Rights aims to strengthen the rights of citizens, generate certainty for society in the new digital reality and increase people’s confidence in the changes and disruptions brought about by new technologies.

Humanist digital transformation

With the publication of the Charter of Digital Rights, Spain advances in the promotion of a humanist digital transformation that seeks to continue placing our country in a position of international vanguard in the protection of the rights of citizens and actively contribute to the different initiatives and debates that are developing at the European and global level.

This consolidates Spain’s leadership in the development of a free, open and inclusive digital society, defining “fair rules” for common development and coexistence in the new digital reality, and guaranteeing the social character of technological transformation.

In fact, the Charter of Digital Rights is based on the advances already made in Spain for the recognition of digital rights, among which it is worth highlighting Title X of Organic Law 3/2018, of December 5, on the Protection of Personal Data and guarantee of digital rights and the recently approved Royal Decree-Law 28/2020, of September 22, on remote work.

With the adoption of the Charter, Spain complies with one of the milestones included in the Charter. Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan for the second half of 2021. The Charter is also one of the ten objectives set out in the Charter. agenda Spain Digital 2025.

Rights adapted to the digital reality

This Charter seeks to update existing and recognized rights in texts such as the Declaration of Human Rights or the Spanish Constitution, and adapt them to the new circumstances of the digital reality.

With regard to the rights of freedom, the text includes the right to the identity of the digital environment, to data protection, to pseudonimate, the right not to be located and outlined, the right to cybersecurity, or the right to digital heritage.

With regard to the rights of equality, the Charter includes the right to equality and non-discrimination in the digital environment, the right of access to the Internet and the right of universal accessibility in the digital environment.

The text also promotes the protection of minors in the digital environment so that guardians or parents ensure that minors make balanced use of digital environments, ensure the proper development of their personality and preserve their dignity; it also promotes the promotion of access to all groups and the promotion of public policies to eliminate gaps in access to the digital environment.

The right to neutrality of the network, to freely receive truthful information, the right to citizen participation by digital means and the right to digital education are other novelties of the text in the section of rights of participation and formation of the public space.

In the workplace, the Charter of Digital Rights includes the right to digital disconnection, rest and reconciliation of personal and family life, the evaluation of impact on the use of algorithms or the development of optimal conditions for the creation of controlled test spaces (sandboxes).

In relation to rights in specific environments, very new and pioneering content is included. This is the case with the rights to artificial intelligence. The text states that AI must ensure a people-centred approach and its inalienable dignity and that the right to non-discrimination must be guaranteed in the development of artificial intelligence systems. Digital rights are also included in the use of neurotechnologies to, among other things, ensure the control of each staff over their own identity, ensure confidentiality and ensure that decisions and processes based on these technologies are not conditioned by the provision of data.

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