# Digital Human Rights

> Open, secure, personal, independent, trustworthy, selective, resilient, portable & safe systems

**Published by:** [Friction Observer](https://friction.observer/)
**Published on:** 2025-05-30
**URL:** https://friction.observer/digital-human-rights

## Content

I'm working on a few projects at the moment that have me struggling to ensure we're considering the full slate of baseline infrastructure capabilities. Juan Benet has proposed a set of 8 Digital Human Rights. They cover a lot of important ground. You can get the full download in this video, starting ~7:00. I felt like they could use a bit of editing for clarity. As I was editing, I also realized there might be a missing 9th human right regarding "safety". Thus, I have arrived for now at the conclusion that all digital infrastructure must be open, secure, personal, independent, trustworthy, selective, resilient, portable and safe. Would love your feedback.1. Open: I can speak freelyI can share my thoughts, ideas, and work without needing permission — and without fear of censorship or erasure.Technical Corollaries:Content-addressable storage (e.g. IPFS)Censorship-resistant publishing (e.g. peer replication, no single point of takedown, permissionless blockchains)Signature-based authorship (e.g. Ed25519)2. Secure: I can speak privatelyI can share, organize, and express myself without being tracked, recorded, or overheard.Technical Corollaries:End-to-end encryption (e.g. Noise Protocol, Double Ratchet)Metadata minimization (e.g. oblivious routing, mixnets)Ephemeral communication with no server storage3. Personal: I own my dataMy files, messages, and memories belong to me. I decide who can see them — and I can take that access away at any time.Technical Corollaries:Local-first storage models (e.g. WNFS)Capability-based access control (e.g. UCANs, ZCAP-LD)Revocable, time-scoped, and minimal grants of accessTimestamped proof of custody or ownership (e.g. NFT metadata as a pointer to user-controlled data)4. Independent: I connect directlyI use systems that link people and devices without needing companies, platforms, or governments in the middle.Technical Corollaries:Peer-to-peer networking (e.g. libp2p, WebRTC)Overlay networks (e.g. WireGuard, Headscale)Decentralized rendezvous and discovery (e.g. DHT, mDNS)Public key infrastructure without central certificate authorities5. Trustworthy: I can verify what happensI don’t have to guess or assume. Every action leaves a trail I can check for myself.Technical Corollaries:Signed logs / event sourcing (e.g. Merkle DAGs, transparency logs)Verifiable credentials & attestations (e.g. DID + VC standards)Reproducible builds and cryptographic audit trailsAppend-only public ledgers6. Selective: I decide what to shareMy information is private by default. Others only see what I choose to show — and only as much as they need.Technical Corollaries:Granular access delegation (e.g. CACAOs, UCANs)Principle of least privilege enforced at the data layerEncrypted blockstores with access via proxies or keysZero-knowledge proofs for selective disclosureE.g. “I’m over 21” without revealing my birthdayE.g. “I earn over $50K” without revealing my salary7. Resilient: I can count on my toolsMy systems keep working — even offline, under pressure, or outside the mainstream. They don’t break when someone says so.Technical Corollaries:Offline-first architecture with sync (e.g. CRDTs, IPFS)Open protocols and standards (e.g. no vendor lock-in)Redundant infrastructure, mesh routing, error tolerance8. Portable: I own my identityMy identity moves with me. It’s under my control, not tied to any platform — and I decide who can use it.Technical Corollaries:Decentralized identifiers (DIDs)Mnemonic-seeded cryptographic identity (e.g. BIP39 → keypair)Non-custodial identity wallets / portable agent keyrings9. Safe: I can define my boundariesI choose how others can reach me, interact with me, and affect my experience. My tools help me set limits, avoid harm, and stay in control.Technical Corollaries:Consent-based interaction models (e.g. request-to-contact, scoped delegation)Local filtering and blocklistsAgent behavior transparency and override mechanismsRate-limiting, abuse detection, and feedback tooling built in

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