>__The collection of signatures was successful: The Pirate Party wants to ensure human-friendly digitalization through a popular initiative. And the canton of Zurich is just the beginning.__
>The Zurich Pirate Party is submitting the collected signatures for its digital popular initiative to the cantonal administration this Wednesday morning.
>It is a political initiative that is expected to make waves far beyond Switzerland’s largest canton. In an interview with watson, co-initiator and Pirate Secretary General Monica Amgwerd takes a stand.
>__What is it about?__
>The Zurich Pirate Party wants to use a popular initiative to curb surveillance capitalism and increase data security. Following the canton of Geneva, the basic right to digital integrity is also to be anchored in the cantonal constitution in Zurich. You can find out all the details in the article that watson published in March of this year to mark the start of the signature collection.
>__The current interview__
>__Ms. Amgwerd, the cantonal initiative started by your party is coming to fruition, congratulations, how big was the effort?__
>Monica Amgwerd: The Zurich section of the Pirate Party has been reactivated over the last two years. We are now a good group of active and very committed members. They have invested hundreds of hours in bringing this initiative to fruition. New members have also joined us from time to time. We were also supported in collecting signatures by the Aargau section. It was also very pleasing to see how many signatures we received by post. The response was generally extremely good, many people are concerned about our issue.
>__What are the most urgent issues related to the fundamental right to digital integrity that need to be addressed by politicians?__
>We see the ever-increasing use of artificial intelligence as a danger. Of course there are very useful applications and we do not want to restrict them in any way, but AI makes mistakes and these are often incomprehensible. The use of facial recognition is therefore dangerous, but processing applications is also tricky. For this we need the right not to be judged by a machine.
>The other major problem is that various actors use our data for financial reasons and to control and manipulate individuals and the population – artificial intelligence plays an important role here too. It is therefore essential to introduce a right to an offline life, because this means that people can decide at certain times or even generally not to leave any data behind.
>At the same time, data economy and privacy by design should become the norm. This also reduces the amount of data we leave behind – this also eliminates the risk of misuse. Without processing and storing the data, companies’ costs and electricity consumption would also be reduced. It would be a win-win situation.
>__Zurich is the most populous canton in Switzerland, and tech companies such as Google and other large IT companies are based here. What impact can acceptance of the initiative have beyond the canton’s borders?__
>The canton of Zurich is an important economic, cultural and social center of Switzerland. By accepting the initiative, we hope that citizens beyond the canton’s borders will hear about this project, recognize its importance and also want to see it implemented in their canton and Switzerland.
>In the longer term, national implementation is needed. In addition, companies, authorities and organizations should rethink their digitization strategies accordingly. Acceptance would be a sign, for example, that acceptance of cash is desired everywhere and that people want to move around privately.
>__Digitization is advancing inexorably.__
>We generally need a serious technology impact assessment when it comes to digitization. This concerns other aspects, such as the handling of critical infrastructures, but also sensitive democratic institutions such as our election and voting procedures or our identity documents. Here, too, we must not take reckless risks because there is too much at stake – our pluralistic society and free, democratic basic order are at stake.
>__What happens next?__
>The Zurich Pirate Party has submitted over 9,000 signatures to the canton for its cantonal popular initiative “a right to live offline”. If 6,000 of these are valid, the matter will be put to the vote.
>The next step will be to examine whether the initiative has been successful by the responsible directorate within the Zurich cantonal administration and then the cantonal parliament (cantonal council) will decide on how to proceed with the recommendation of the government council. This can take several months.
>According to experts, it is unclear how such fundamental concerns about digitization should be implemented at the cantonal level.
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Translated Article:
>__The collection of signatures was successful: The Pirate Party wants to ensure human-friendly digitalization through a popular initiative. And the canton of Zurich is just the beginning.__
>The Zurich Pirate Party is submitting the collected signatures for its digital popular initiative to the cantonal administration this Wednesday morning.
>It is a political initiative that is expected to make waves far beyond Switzerland’s largest canton. In an interview with watson, co-initiator and Pirate Secretary General Monica Amgwerd takes a stand.
>__What is it about?__
>The Zurich Pirate Party wants to use a popular initiative to curb surveillance capitalism and increase data security. Following the canton of Geneva, the basic right to digital integrity is also to be anchored in the cantonal constitution in Zurich. You can find out all the details in the article that watson published in March of this year to mark the start of the signature collection.
>__The current interview__
>__Ms. Amgwerd, the cantonal initiative started by your party is coming to fruition, congratulations, how big was the effort?__
>Monica Amgwerd: The Zurich section of the Pirate Party has been reactivated over the last two years. We are now a good group of active and very committed members. They have invested hundreds of hours in bringing this initiative to fruition. New members have also joined us from time to time. We were also supported in collecting signatures by the Aargau section. It was also very pleasing to see how many signatures we received by post. The response was generally extremely good, many people are concerned about our issue.
>__What are the most urgent issues related to the fundamental right to digital integrity that need to be addressed by politicians?__
>We see the ever-increasing use of artificial intelligence as a danger. Of course there are very useful applications and we do not want to restrict them in any way, but AI makes mistakes and these are often incomprehensible. The use of facial recognition is therefore dangerous, but processing applications is also tricky. For this we need the right not to be judged by a machine.
>The other major problem is that various actors use our data for financial reasons and to control and manipulate individuals and the population – artificial intelligence plays an important role here too. It is therefore essential to introduce a right to an offline life, because this means that people can decide at certain times or even generally not to leave any data behind.
>At the same time, data economy and privacy by design should become the norm. This also reduces the amount of data we leave behind – this also eliminates the risk of misuse. Without processing and storing the data, companies’ costs and electricity consumption would also be reduced. It would be a win-win situation.
>__Zurich is the most populous canton in Switzerland, and tech companies such as Google and other large IT companies are based here. What impact can acceptance of the initiative have beyond the canton’s borders?__
>The canton of Zurich is an important economic, cultural and social center of Switzerland. By accepting the initiative, we hope that citizens beyond the canton’s borders will hear about this project, recognize its importance and also want to see it implemented in their canton and Switzerland.
>In the longer term, national implementation is needed. In addition, companies, authorities and organizations should rethink their digitization strategies accordingly. Acceptance would be a sign, for example, that acceptance of cash is desired everywhere and that people want to move around privately.
>__Digitization is advancing inexorably.__
>We generally need a serious technology impact assessment when it comes to digitization. This concerns other aspects, such as the handling of critical infrastructures, but also sensitive democratic institutions such as our election and voting procedures or our identity documents. Here, too, we must not take reckless risks because there is too much at stake – our pluralistic society and free, democratic basic order are at stake.
>__What happens next?__
>The Zurich Pirate Party has submitted over 9,000 signatures to the canton for its cantonal popular initiative “a right to live offline”. If 6,000 of these are valid, the matter will be put to the vote.
>The next step will be to examine whether the initiative has been successful by the responsible directorate within the Zurich cantonal administration and then the cantonal parliament (cantonal council) will decide on how to proceed with the recommendation of the government council. This can take several months.
>According to experts, it is unclear how such fundamental concerns about digitization should be implemented at the cantonal level.
[digitale-integritaet.ch: Website of the Zurich Pirate Party on the popular initiative](https://digitale-integritaet.ch/)