Digital Rights and Literacy
We advocate for an open, accessible and inclusive internet. We are in favour of encryption, data justice, and open source solutions. We champion digital sovereignty and the responsible development and use of artificial intelligence.
Digital technologies and the internet have become an integral part of the modern world of networking, the exchange of ideas and the procurement of information. However, these technologies serve large corporations and repressive power structures rather than our everyday needs, all of which have a common interest in owning our data. Information about our online behaviour, personal data, biometrics and more allows the authorities to exert control over us and capital to profit at our expense. In both cases, this deepens social inequality and power imbalances.
At Danes je nov dan, we oppose the use of modern technologies for mass surveillance and the violation of fundamental rights such as the right to freedom of movement, private communication, organisation and freedom of expression. We call for restraint in the use of surveillance technologies and caution in the development of artificial intelligence, as well as strict security measures and controls to prevent abuse of power.
At the same time, we call on national and European institutions to strictly regulate and monitor large tech companies that unlawfully violate our rights and digital sovereignty. We expect these institutions to protect both our individual rights and the public interest and to prevent large companies from accessing sensitive data through the use of open source software.
As a society and as individuals, we need a comprehensive understanding of technological developments, the highest level of media and digital literacy and robust legislation and safeguards. This is the only way we can competently protect ourselves from the risks posed by the rapid advancement of technology, AI, fake news, the spread of hate speech and propaganda. At Danes je nov dan, we dedicate ourselves to these goals through various activities, advocacy campaigns, public appeals, the organisation of events and training courses and the development of digital tools.
The use of artificial intelligence systems has played an important role in the surveillance, oppression and killings of Palestinians by Israel for many years, and it has intensified in the recent period. But the sole aim of the Israeli military-industrial complex is not to kill indiscriminately, but to use the occupied Palestinian territory as a testing ground for weapons and surveillance technologies that are later sold on the global market. We are exploring what this means for Palestinian fundamental rights and freedoms, the broader struggle against militarisation and the surveillance society and what does the normalisation and legitimisation of the use of military and surveillance AI systems convey. As A. Loewenstein pointed out: "What starts in Palestine never stays there."
3. September 2024
We – as individuals, collectives, communities, and societies – have the agency, and responsibility to shape the future of a digitalised world. In 2024 and beyond, we call on you to pass laws that respect our vision articulated below, and reject the laws that steer us away from the future we want to build.
16. August 2024
On 1 August 2024, the long-awaited Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act enters into force, meaning that after years of negotiations, the AI Act is now an official EU law. As we move into this next phase of our work on artificial intelligence, we urge decision-makers to comply with five demands.
1. August 2024
This is a continuation of the 2021 project, which investigated fake profiles on Twitter. In the meantime, this social network was renamed X, changed ownership and restricted the use of its API, which complicated our further research and forced us to make adjustments. In the second part of the research, we analysed the timing of follower acquisition to determine whether individual political profiles gained new followers in an expected way (linear growth) or whether their follower numbers suddenly spiked during certain periods.
24. April 2024
DISCO is a new regional event that fosters critical thought, champions digital rights, and fuels social activism. The first DISCO conference, subtitled Civil Society Reimagining Technological Progress, will focus on the transformative power of active and engaged civil society. From inspiring legal battles and activist campaigns to engineering breakthroughs, we will explore alternative ways to think about the idea of technological progress. Guided by a constellation of captivating voices, we intend to reshape the discourse and redefine the narrative, propelling our region to the vanguard of the global digital sovereignty movement.
24. October 2023
The mobile application is an educational and entertaining tool for formal and informal education that aims to promote the development of critical thinking and media literacy among young people. Its interactive thematic modules, consisting of videos, textual explanations, images and questions for users, are designed to cover different areas of critical thinking and media literacy. Our partners at Zašto ne provided the concept and the content for the app and we developed it at Danes je nov dan.
22. September 2023
With the support of co-signing organisations, we called on the Ministry of Digital Transformation of the Republic of Slovenia, other relevant ministries, the Government of the Republic of Slovenia and the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia to take an active role in protecting the rights of marginalised people, foreigners, migrants, refugees, asylum seekers and other persons with irregular migrant status. We informed the officials that we expect them to ensure respect for and protection of human rights.
6. September 2023
Together with our partners (Pod črto, @ObjaveIzKleti, Marko Plahuta), we spent the second half of 2020 analysing 24 fake Twitter profiles that published divisive or hostile content and were regularly mentioned or retweeted by Slovenian right-wing politicians. The publication of results in February of 2021 was met with great media and public interest, as well as attempts of defamation by other Twitter users, some of them authentic and some probably fake. We presented unequivocal evidence that these were indeed fake profiles, as well as graphs showing various aspects of their activities. We also took steps to report cases of identity theft to Twitter.
4. February 2021
In October 2018 we organised two youth workshops as part of Meet & Code programme. The second was intended for high school and university students, with whom we built sensors for measuring air quality. We built a chip that measures the number of dust particles in the air (PM2.5 and PM10), as well as temperature and humidity. We installed some of the sensors across Slovenia and you can see their location visualized on a dedicated website.
1. October 2018
In October 2018 we organized two youth workshops as part of Meet & Code programme. The first was intended for elementary school students, whom we helped understand the basics of (digital) encryption. Together, we examined the key concepts and then carried out simple experiments, in which we attempted to decode encrypted messages. We used everyday examples to explain the importance of encryption and demonstrated to the participants that internet safety is of paramount importance.
1. October 2018
This was a campaign against the normalisation of hate in the form of widespread corporate advertising in the media that inflame intolerance. We redesigned certain ads by companies that ignored their responsibility to the public, and violated ethical standards as well as good taste by advertising in highly manipulative media. We redesigned their ads in a manner that they started directly communicating what they had only implicitly supported before. The campaign was hugely successful: while receiving less than friendly PR messages from the companies in question, we saw the Prime Minister urge them to think about where they choose to advertise.
1. September 2018
As EU set out to adopt a copyright reform in 2018, we joined the international campaign to fight it. Whereas the reform itself was necessary, some of the proposed changes were very problematic, endagering the idea of free and autonomous Internet. We demanded the abolition of Article 11, which jeopardized the right to link, and Article 13, which allowed for censorship even in the fair use of copyrighted works. We demanded Articles 3 and 4, which deal with permitted exceptions to data mining and education, to be rewritten. Sadly, despite the joint efforts of a broad pan-European civil society coalition, the EU Parliament still passed the reform.
1. June 2018