Human rights advocates, including the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), have long argued that the design of internet and web technologies significantly impacts their ability to defend the rights and well-being of all people, particularly marginalized groups. A recent report from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) supports this view and provides recommendations on how technical standard-setting can address challenges to broad participation and effective respect for human rights.
The report, which is the result of a year-long research process examining how technical standard-setting processes affect human rights, was recently submitted to the Human Rights Council. It now falls upon industry, governments, and standard-setting bodies to allocate resources and attention to implement these recommendations.
CDT contributed to the development of this report through its participation in the Internet Governance Forum and the Human Rights Council. "Those comments were frequently cited in the OHCHR report," noted CDT. The organization has been involved in this area since 2015 through its Human Rights Protocol Considerations Research Group at the Internet Research Task Force.
The report outlines a range of recommendations aimed at incorporating human rights into technical standards. These can be categorized into Review, Transparency, and Participation.
Review involves obtaining feedback from a broader community on potential impacts of standards proposals. The report emphasizes due diligence in identifying and addressing human rights throughout the development and use of standards.
Transparency pertains to access to information about standards development for accountability and public oversight. The report suggests that much information should be publicly available as well as accessible to researchers.
Participation requires open and inclusive involvement from all stakeholders. The report recommends measures to overcome cultural and financial barriers to increase participation, especially from underrepresented regions like the Global South.
A case study on W3C processes illustrates how these recommendations could be applied in practice. While W3C has made strides towards prioritizing human rights, more steps are necessary. For instance, W3C's practices of wide review are cited positively in the UN OHCHR report but further human rights impact assessments are recommended.
Regarding transparency, W3C's practices serve as a model with publicly archived drafts, issues, proposals, debates, and decisions documented openly.
In terms of participation, although W3C has made efforts to diversify voices at its table through various means such as GitHub feedback and hybrid meetings, significant investment is still needed to cover costs for more civil society participation globally.
Another case study focuses on digital credentials—an emerging set of technical standards with profound societal impacts. Digital credentials like driver’s licenses or passports are increasingly being issued digitally by states for presentation both offline and online. These initiatives rely on cryptographic designs that influence interactions with governments while impacting privacy from companies and government agencies.
As W3C considers work on defining digital credentials for websites, implementing UN OHCHR's recommendations could be crucial in guiding this process responsibly. This includes conducting forward-looking reviews of societal impacts beyond privacy concerns, ensuring transparency in discussions about digital credentials publicly hosted by W3C versus closed-door developments at ISO, and facilitating broad public participation despite urgent timelines driven by legislative mandates.
In conclusion, with government mandates pushing for digital identification soon becoming a reality, it is imperative that governments, industry players, and civil society collaborate now to integrate UN OHCHR’s recommendations into standard-setting processes protecting basic human rights from inception.
